Russian government cracks down on media and protests

Andrea Peters

WSWS.ORG

In an effort to forestall the eruption of significant popular opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Putin government is systematically banning news outlets and social media platforms in the country. The government is simultaneously cracking down on still as of yet small anti-war protests in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other cities.

On Friday, Russia’s federal agency for information technology and mass communication, Roskomnadzor, announced that Facebook and Twitter are now banned. As a justification, the agency cited the fact that these platforms have been blocking the “free circulation of information” by limiting the Western public’s ability to read material from Zvezda, RIA Novosti, Sputnik, RT, Lenta.ru, and Gazeta.ru, a combination of private and state-owned Russian media.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, chairs a Security Council meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. (Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The same day, Roskomnadzor announced that it is demanding to know why TikTok is scrubbing material posted by RIA Novosti. TikTok has since declared that it is halting its operations in Russia altogether due to a new law passed penalizing “false” information.

Roskomnadzor has also declared that it will limit Zello, a platform that enables users to subscribe to channels and communicate with one another through phone and two-way walkie talkies, if it did not stop sending messages “that contain false information about the course of the special operation of the armed forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine.”

Several internet, radio and TV agencies associated with the anti-Putin opposition have now been blocked, including Ekho Moskvi, Dozhd, and Meduza. The first two suspended their operations entirely, with Ekho Moskvi declaring that it is liquidating its website, radio station and social media accounts. Dozhd announced it was halting its work but on a temporary basis. Meduza continues to post material on Telegram, a social media channel widely used in Russia.

Telegram, along with YouTube and Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, now remain some of the only accessible platforms. However, Pavel Durov, the founder and head of Telegram, said in late February that he was considering shuttering the operation, citing concerns that it was contributing to the escalation of social tensions and “ethnic hatred.” His remarks unleashed a flood of objections from users who indicated it is their only way of sharing information. The government has now asked Telegram to delete users and bots posting information about dead and captured Russian soldiers.

The domestic press crackdown is extending to foreign media as well, with access to German press outlet Deutsche Welle, US-sponsored Radio Svoboda, and the Russian version of the BBC all being ended.

This is unfolding as Putin signed a new law on Friday that authorizes fines and prison sentences for people that spread allegedly untrue reports about Russia’s military actions and/or call for sanctions against the country. The promotion of “false facts” could result in a financial penalty of between 700,000 and 1.5 million rubles and up to three years in prison, and should that be done by “officials or organized groups,” the fine and detention time will be even higher. The most severe consequences—10 to 15 years of imprisonment—are reserved for those who knowingly use “false fakes.” It also bans the “obstruction” or “discrediting” of the use of Russian troops “in the best interests of the country” and to “maintain peace and security.”

The language of the law is extremely broad, such that basically any expression of opposition to war could force one to fork over large sums of money, land one in prison or both.

According to official reports, over the weekend the police detained 1,700 people in Moscow, 750 in Saint Petersburg, and 1,061 in other areas of Russia for participating in anti-war rallies. Based on what the government claims to have been the overall size of these protests—6,200 total—in each case somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of participants were arrested.

According to social media images re-broadcast on smaller news sites, in addition to the country’s two largest cities, demonstrations took place in Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Chita, Krasnoyarsk, Belgorod and Petrozavodsk. Another press report said that anti-war events happened in 49 cities across Russia. Signs held aloft by protesters read, “Ukraine is not our enemy,” “No to war with Ukraine,” and “We are for peace.”

The attack on democratic rights is also unfolding in Europe and the United States, where either access to press agencies from Russia has been cut off or coverage and commentary on the war from these sources are being labeled in such a manner that encourages readers to dismiss them as false out of hand. This is accompanied by a campaign targeting Russian artists and cultural figures and even Russian culture itself, in an effort to demonize that society and its people.

In all cases the aim is to deaden the population’s thinking, prevent them from making a critical appraisal of the causes of the war, and above all, forestall the emergence of a mass anti-war movement that is equally hostile to Western imperialism and Russian nationalism. Nothing terrifies the ruling classes in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, Moscow and elsewhere than the prospect that millions of working people will unite across national lines and drive all of them out of power.

Thus, everywhere war propaganda, intimidation and the threat of physical violence are mobilized in a desperate effort to keep the war drive alive. No one should ever make the mistake of thinking that the White House will not resort to the same repressive measures to which the Kremlin is currently turning when it is confronted with an eruption of social discontent. The American ruling class, for all its hosannas to democracy, will have no compunction fining, arresting and beating up masses of workers when they challenge their policies.

In the US and Europe, every nerve is being strained by the press and the political elite to whip up pro-war moods and direct ordinary people’s deeply felt disgust at Putin’s criminal act into support for the West’s war mad policies. In Russia, there is a desperate to attempt to prevent the population’s well-founded hostility towards the provocations and threats of the US and NATO from transforming into politically conscious hatred of the Russian capitalist system that has brought society to an utter dead end.

In the face of anti-Russian venom, the Cliburn piano competition takes a principled stand

David Walsh 

WSWS.ORG

The campaign of anti-Russian venom is reaching new heights. On a daily basis, actors, writers, historians, journalists and scientists release statements that seem intended to outdo each other in their unhinged character. A portion of the upper-middle class globally has succumbed to war fever of an intense and diseased variety. They have discovered the “heart of darkness,” Vladimir Putin and his regime.

The proposed cancellation at the University of Milano-Bicocca of a course on the 19th century Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky generated such anger and ridicule that the institution was obliged to back down. On social media, the instructor of the course, writer Paolo Nori, commented that “Not only is being a living Russian wrong in Italy today, but also being a dead Russian, who was sentenced to death in 1849 because he read something forbidden.”

In the face of the relentless demonization, aimed at poisoning public opinion against the Russian people and facilitating the war drive of the US and NATO, the stance of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (The Cliburn) in Fort Worth, Texas has a particularly principled character.

The first competition was held in 1962, four years after American pianist Van Cliburn’s victory at the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in April 1958, a major event during the Cold War period.

The Cliburn released a statement March 3 in which it decried the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “reprehensible and heartbreaking” and expressed its firm stand against “this tyranny.” The foundation went on to explain, however, that the “Russian-born pianists who have applied for the Sixteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition are not officials of their government, nor is their participation in the Cliburn state-sponsored.” In the “vision of our namesake and inspiration, Van Cliburn, and our mandate to support young artists … the Russian-born pianists will be allowed to audition for the Cliburn Competition.”

The press statement commented that Cliburn’s victory in 1958 “inspired the world as a testament to the transcendence of art, even at the most tense of times between two superpowers.” It cited the pianist’s own observation that “the eternal verities inherent in classical music … remain a spiritual beacon for people all over the world.”

The Cliburn explained that 15 of the 72 pianists invited to take part in screening auditions for the 2022 Cliburn Competition were Russian-born, and “eight of those currently reside in Moscow. These young, brilliant artists have worked their way through an intense and complicated situation to ensure they would be able … to compete on one of classical music’s biggest stages.”

The organization quotes a note sent by one of the Russian applicants: “I hope that the great positive impact Maestro Van Cliburn had on the course of the Cold War should be an excellent example for all the artists.”

It remains to be seen what pressures will be brought to bear on The Cliburn to rescind its decision.

Van Cliburn’s success at the Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 was quite an extraordinary occurrence.

Van Cliburn in Moscow 1958

Harvey Lavan “Van” Cliburn Jr. was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1934, the son of Rildia Bee O’Bryan and Harvey Lavan Cliburn Sr. His mother had the ambition of being a concert pianist, but was forced by her parents to give up the idea. She studied seriously in New York with Arthur Friedheim, Franz Liszt’s foremost pupil and, later, his secretary. Van Cliburn began playing piano at the age of three. He eventually attended the Juilliard School and made his Carnegie Hall debut at 20.

Cliburn’s burgeoning career coincided with changes in the international political and cultural situation, which included growing exchanges between the West and the Soviet Union. In October 1955, Emil Gilels became the first Soviet musician to visit the US since the Second World War. Nigel Cliff in Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story—How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War (2016), writes, “Gilels made his debut at Carnegie Hall with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy, Rachmaninoff’s favorite conductor. As he played the inevitable Piano Concerto no. 1 by Tchaikovsky, the audience’s mood transformed from uneasy to ecstatic.”

Cliburn was in the Carnegie Hall audience. “Within weeks the Soviet violinist David Oistrakh followed, and astonished Americans with his virtuosic intensity,” Cliff adds. In May 1957, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould made a highly successful concert tour of the USSR, becoming the first North American musician to play behind the “Iron Curtain.”

The Soviet launch of Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, in October 1957 threw US authorities, accustomed to boasting about American industrial and technological superiority, into a crisis. The “Space Race” was on. The US government responded nervously with a variety of initiatives, including, in July 1958, the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The Tchaikovsky Competition in the spring of 1958 took place in a tense, heightened atmosphere.

The appearances of Gilels and Oistrakh in the US demonstrated the great importance and even reverence accorded to classical music and the arts generally in the USSR. As Cliff points out,

The Soviet republics supported 503 permanent year-round theater companies, 314 middle schools of the arts, 48 higher schools, and 43 advanced conservatories and theatrical and art institutes, while the Ministry of Culture had direct charge of 900,000 arts workers. Many were employed in the famously tough system of music training that funneled children as young as seven to specialist music schools, where the best were prepared for eight years’ further study at a conservatory.

The first Tchaikovsky Competition had astonishing artistic credentials. The organizing committee was headed by composer Dmitri Shostakovich. As for the judges, Cliff asserts, “they comprised perhaps the most formidable piano jury ever assembled. Alongside the sturdy Gilels and the lugubrious [Sviatoslav] Richter was their teacher, Heinrich Neuhaus; and Vladimir Ashkenazy’s teacher, Lev Oborin. The Russian Dmitri Kabalevsky and the Englishman Sir Arthur Bliss represented composers, and the other judges came from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, and the USSR.”

As the competition approached,

The names of Shostakovich, Gilels, and Richter were everywhere. A national audience tuned in to a radio series called Heading Toward the Competition, which spotlighted the participants and their recordings, explained how the event would work, and interviewed leading Soviet musicians, who shared their hopes for its success. Pravda and Izvestiya devoted columns of print to the great event, running biographies of the contestants alongside their photographs: fifteen one day, fifteen the next.

Cliburn’s performances of Russian concertos, Tchaikovsky No. 1, Rachmaninoff No. 3, received a rapturous response from the Moscow audiences. Lina Baranov, then a student at the Central School for Gifted Children in Moscow in 1958, recently told the Los Angeles Times that she had listened “to a dress rehearsal of Van Cliburn when he played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.” She went on, “It was incredible. People were crying. One pianist said that his playing reminded him of Sergei Rachmaninoff. At that time, we never heard Rachmaninoff 3 in Russia. It was so beautiful, so inspiring.”

Richter in particular insisted on Cliburn’s superiority and gave him the highest marks in every round.

Cliff describes the atmosphere at the event and Cliburn’s response:

The competition press officers hovered around, interviewing the contestants and asking their views on the Soviet Union. Van diplomatically stuck to music. “I have walked where Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and other great musicians have walked,” he dictated. “I am touched by the cordial reception that was given to me. It is a great pleasure to play for the Russians who are such fine lovers of music. The friendliness of the audience inspired me, and one felt as if one was playing better than usual. This is my first trip outside the United States, and I am very happy to be in the homeland of wonderful Russian composers for whose work I have great respect.”

According to legend at least, when the judging was completed, government officials approached Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev apprehensively and told him that an American had played very well. “What do the others say about him? Is he the best?” Khrushchev reportedly asked. “Yes, he is the best.” “In that case,” the premier said, “give him the first prize.”

Cliburn became instantly and enormously popular in the Soviet Union. Cliff describes the “hundreds of letters and boxes of pink floral telegrams” that accumulated in his Moscow hotel room, “some simply addressed, ‘Conservatory, Vanya Kleeburn.’ Many came from students: not only musicians but entire classes at the Faculty for History and Philology of the Ivanovo State Pedagogical Institute and the Faculty of Soil Science and Biology of Moscow State University, who signed themselves, ‘Your friends forever.’ Others came from a forestry engineer, a geographer, and a telegraph operator named Saida Nurmukhamedova, who asked Van, ‘on behalf of all Soviet telegraph operators, to pass our friendly greetings to the American telegraph operators. Our telegraph operators will always be happy to hear your exceptional playing.’ She added, ‘When I have a son I shall definitely name him after you.’”

Cliburn’s warm reception and his equally warm reaction to the Soviet public alarmed J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and other US government officials. A secret cable from the State Department reported that certain of Cliburn’s associates were concerned that he “has become quite laudatory of his reception and stay in Soviet Union. Under circumstances, they are particularly apprehensive as to what might happen when Cliburn first returns to US and meets press. They believe he is liable to make some very unwise statements if queried on political matters, about which he knows very little, particularly in view of his reported change in attitude. They speculate in this regard that Cliburn may have been ‘approached’ by Soviets.”

Van Cliburn, 1966 (Photo credit–Jac. de Nijs/Anefo)

Time magazine put him on their cover, as “The Texan Who Conquered Russia,” and Cliburn was honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York City on May 28, 1958, the only time a classical musician has received such treatment. After the parade, at City Hall, Cliburn told the audience:

I appreciate more than you will ever know that you are honoring me, but the thing that thrills me the most is that you are honoring classical music. Because I’m only one of many. I’m only a witness and a messenger. Because I believe so much in the beauty, the construction, the architecture invisible, the importance for all generations, for young people to come that it will help their minds, develop their attitudes, and give them values. That is why I’m so grateful that you have honored me in that spirit.

The responses of both Soviet citizens and Americans provided a more accurate picture of the actual state of feelings between the two populations. Despite the vigorous efforts of US propagandists, vicious anti-Russian hatred in the 1950s and 1960s was largely the preserve of the “lunatic fringe,” the extreme right, the “John Birchers” and such. Now it has infected a significant section of the “respectable” middle class, grown wealthy on the basis of financial parasitism. These elements have discarded socially progressive views and opted for selfish race and gender politics. They have shifted far to the right and now feel no compunction about enthusing over the US and NATO war drive and portraying Ukrainian nationalists and fascists as courageous “democrats.”

Embracing far-right Freedom Convoy’s demands, Canada’s governments rapidly drop remaining COVID-19 public health measures

Dylan Lubao

WSWS.ORG

Proceeding under the cover of relentless war propaganda against Russia, federal and provincial governments across Canada are rapidly dismantling the few remaining COVID-19 public health measures.

Premiers in every province are shamelessly regurgitating the same lies they have told countless times before, that the pandemic is “over” and that the population, which has suffered almost 37,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations, must learn to “live with the virus.” In so doing, they are fully embracing the fascistic, anti-scientific measures demanded by the far-right Freedom Convoy, which occupied downtown Ottawa for over three weeks and blocked US border crossings in early February.

In this Thursday, April 29, 2021, photo, Sherry Cross Child, a Canadian resident of Stand Off, Alberta, receives a COVID-19 vaccine at the Piegan-Carway border crossing near Babb, Mont. (AP Photo/Iris Samuels)

These herd immunity policies, cribbed from the fascistic Great Barrington Declaration, are being carried out as the country exits the fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The most recent wave was fueled by a combination of the highly transmissible Omicron variant and a relentless drive by governments to keep all workplaces and schools open.

Implicit in the claim that workers must “live with the virus” is that a significant number of the elderly, the immunocompromised, and even healthy individuals will needlessly die from the virus. The ruling class, purely for the sake of enlarging its already immense wealth, is ready to infect the entire population with COVID-19.

Having declared that the Omicron variant was “mild” from the outset, the ruling class and its government representatives then presided over a deadly winter surge of the pandemic. Principled scientists and health care professionals warned that failure to reverse government reopening policies, including the rollback of widespread PCR testing, would lead to mass infection and death. This is precisely what occurred.

There has been a concerted effort by capitalist governments and the corporate press to sweep the past three months under the rug, despite it being one of the worst phases of the pandemic to date. The working class is told, day in and day out, that the “worst is behind us,” without an actual accounting of the massive toll this past winter took on human life.

The first COVID-19 case in Canada caused by the Omicron variant was documented on November 28, 2021. In the preceding three months, the Delta variant ravaged the country during a fall surge of the pandemic, which reached its ebb in early December.

No sooner had the new variant begun rapidly spreading within Canada than governments claimed that Omicron was impossible to stop and would infect everyone. They framed this as a net positive, supposedly leading to herd immunity. This was despite research demonstrating that infection with Omicron conferred no significant long-term immunity to COVID-19. Many people previously infected with Omicron have been reinfected with the BA.2 sub-variant.

Less than two months after the first confirmed case, on January 26, Omicron produced the highest single-day death toll of the pandemic, with 226 deaths recorded across the country. During the three months from December 1, 2021 to February 28, 2022, COVID-19 killed approximately 6,500 people. Only the first wave of the pandemic, in the spring of 2020, and the second wave, in the winter of 2020, produced greater death tolls, with approximately 8,500 and 9,700 dead, respectively.

The sobering impact of this level of death can only be appreciated when one recognizes that at the height of the fifth wave, over 80 percent of the Canadian population was fully vaccinated, with around 45 percent further inoculated with a third booster dose. In comparison, a vaccine was not yet developed during the first wave, and only a small proportion of the population was vaccinated with even one dose at the height of the second wave.

Even these staggering mortality figures are likely undercounts. Dr. Tara Moriarty, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, estimates that only Quebec has accurately reported its number of COVID-19 deaths, while a province like British Columbia, governed by the “progressive” New Democratic Party, underreports its COVID-19 deaths by a factor of three.

According to Dr. Moriarty’s modeling, BC is only behind Alberta in per capita excess deaths during the pandemic, which is viewed as a more reliable indicator of the real COVID-19 death toll under conditions where provincial governments have throttled public testing to hide the extent of the pandemic from the population. BC’s excess deaths per one hundred thousand people reached a high of 125 by the end of November 2021, compared to Alberta’s at 200.

In total, at least 1.48 million Canadians officially contracted COVID-19 during the fifth wave according to Worldometer, representing almost four percent of the total population. However, the Coalition Avenir Quebec government has admitted that at least three million Quebec residents have been infected with Omicron, representing over one third of the population. If one assumes that a similar ratio of infection per head of population has occurred across the country, upwards of 13 million out of Canada’s 38 million inhabitants may have been infected by Omicron.

Even using a conservative estimate of ten percent of all infections, the number of infected individuals who will go on to develop symptoms of Long COVID is mind-boggling. What has been prepared through the mass infection of millions of Canadians in such a short amount of time is chronic and potentially debilitating illness for countless people for years or decades. Research has drawn the comparison between COVID-19 infection and lead poisoning when it comes to a person’s cognitive faculties, and the disease has been shown to attack many of the human body’s critical systems.

Case numbers, hospitalizations, and deaths are all on the decline. This is largely the result of the virus burning its way through vulnerable sections of the population, and not because the federal and provincial governments have done anything to stop its spread. Major disruptions to public health care systems persist. After being brought to the brink of collapse during the fifth wave, hospitals continue to suffer unprecedented levels of staff attrition.

Nevertheless, prominent provincial leaders, such as the hard-right Premiers Jason Kenney in Alberta and Doug Ford in Ontario, have struggled to contain their enthusiasm to eliminate the public health measures that constitute an intolerable drain on profits for the banks and corporations they serve.

Alberta, which Kenney previously reopened to great corporate fanfare in the summer of 2021, only for the province to subsequently suffer its worst wave of the pandemic, has along with Saskatchewan dropped all public health measures. This includes indoor capacity limits and mask mandates for all but the highest-risk settings, such as long-term care homes. Vaccine passports have also been eliminated.

In Ontario, Quebec, BC, and Manitoba, all indoor capacity limits have been lifted, and government figures in each province have openly mused about dropping mask mandates by the end of March. The maritime provinces are following suit, with New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador set to drop mask mandates by the middle of the month.

All of this is taking place as early signs point to a resurgence of the pandemic. Wastewater sampling in Ontario and Saskatchewan shows elevated levels of COVID-19, suggesting the beginning of a new wave driven by the new BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron. In addition, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kieran Moore has stated that the number of people newly infected with COVID-19 in Ontario each day is likely ten times the recorded number of 2,000.

Meanwhile, the federal Liberal government, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is once again facilitating the provincial governments’ imposition of the dictates of Bay Street, while cynically posturing as an opponent of herd immunity policy. Not once during the whole previous course of the pandemic did the federal government invoke the Emergencies Act to declare a national emergency and coordinate a national response to eliminate the virus, even though this could have saved tens of thousands of lives. Instead, their response to the pandemic has been to shore up the profits and wealth of the ruling class, including by granting them over $650 billion in bailout money starting in spring 2020. On the other hand, the Trudeau government extended poverty rations through the limited CERB benefit for workers laid off during the pandemic.

Chief responsibility for the calamity that has befallen workers in Canada lies with the trade union bureaucracy and the NDP, who have propped up the minority Liberal government for the duration of the pandemic and are complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

Instead of fighting for the safety of their members and their families, the labour bureaucracy has smothered and sabotaged all workers’ efforts to oppose herd immunity policy and create safer working conditions. This includes, but is not limited to, shutting down all talk of strike action to oppose the dangerous reopening of schools and unsafe working conditions, and actively intervening to forestall left-wing counterdemonstrations against the Freedom Convoy.

The dismantling of COVID-19 public health measures will lead to a resurgence of hospitalizations and deaths. To oppose these homicidal policies requires the building of a movement to fight for a COVID-19 elimination strategy, which must be based in the working class and unite workers of all countries in a common struggle against capitalist herd immunity.

Australia’s floods: An indictment of capitalism

Socialist Equality Party (Australia)

The floods that have shattered communities across large areas of Australia’s eastern states over the past week have further demonstrated the indifference of governments—Coalition and Labor—for the health, lives and livelihoods of ordinary working people.

Coming on top of the 2019–20 bushfire catastrophe and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the floods have further laid bare their failure to take the necessary steps to protect the population from such disasters.

In this photo provided by the Fraser Coast Regional Council, water floods streets and houses in Maryborough, Australia, Monday, Feb. 28, 2022.

 (Queensland Fire and Emergency Services via AP)

Every aspect of the floods crisis—from the lack of preparation and warnings to people, to the inadequacy of basic infrastructure and support services, and the lack of assistance offered to the hundreds of thousands of flood victims—is the direct result of the subordination of society to the dictates of private profit.

Over the past week, at least 16 lives have been lost, and some people are still unaccounted for. More storms and flooding are predicted. Already, thousands of homes have been destroyed or severely damaged, especially in poor and working-class areas where most residents are not insured because of the exorbitant cost of premiums or the refusal of the insurance giants to cover flood damage.

More than a week after the floods first engulfed homes and small businesses, many people still have no power or food and fuel supplies, and entire towns and regions remain without essential Internet services and reliable phone coverage, adding to the dangers and trauma of the emergency. For days on end, flood victims have been unable to even contact emergency services to be rescued, access critical safety information or get in touch with their families.

In the world’s 13th largest economy there are people who have gone for days without food, clothing or shelter. Many are yet to see any government-organised assistance.

Just two years ago, governments—state and federal—left thousands of people unprotected and abandoned during bushfires that ravaged large areas of eastern Australia and enveloped cities and towns, including the country’s two largest cities—Sydney and Melbourne, in a pall of smoke. As with the floods, essential services that have been run down over decades were simply not able cope.

Governments have also let loose the COVID-19 virus right at the point when the threats posed by the highly infectious Omicron strain emerged in Australia. The scrapping of virtually all public health restrictions has led to a massive surge of infections, hospitalisations and deaths putting huge strains on the hospital system.

While governments and the media promote the lie that the pandemic is all but over, last month recorded the highest number of deaths. Workers and students are being pushed back into workplaces, schools and universities for the sake of corporate profit at the expense of the health and lives of the population.

The demand for people to “live with the virus” is matched by the insistence that people must live with floods and fires, and take “individual responsibility” and somehow make themselves “resilient.”

There have been shocking scenes. People have been forced to cling for their lives for hours on rooftops, unable to get help from emergency services. Most were eventually rescued only through the often dangerous and heroic efforts of fellow residents, who arrived with boats and kayaks. These selfless responses are in stark contrast to the failures of the governments, federal, state and municipal.

For the second time in 11 years, Brisbane and its surrounding regions have been devastated, with the damage more widespread than in the 2011 floods. Up to 20,000 homes have been affected in the country’s third largest city, with the worst damage in working-class areas such as Goodna, Logan and Beenleigh.

Queensland’s state Labor Party Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk defended her government’s failure to adequately prepare or warn people in time for them to save their possessions and evacuate. She claimed that weather forecasts had kept changing, but the Bureau of Meteorology issued a specific warning on February 23 that a slow-moving low pressure system was dragging water from the sea and dumping it over the coastline. “There has been torrential rain for two days and there is much more to come,” it stated.

The same weather system struck Lismore, a northern New South Wales (NSW) regional city of 44,000 people. A life-threatening wall of water swept through the lower working-class area of the city, swamping some 14,000 homes at about 3am last Monday. No official warning was provided to residents. The city’s inadequate levee was overwhelmed, as it was most recently in 2017, but the NSW government’s Special Emergency Services (SES) had only two boats on hand to rescue stranded survivors.

Governments and the media have depicted the floods as simply a natural disaster, describing it as a “rain bomb.” In reality, even though the weather systems involved are extreme, the destructive outcomes are the result of profit-driven and cost-cutting political decisions.

Profit-driven and cost-cutting decisions

Lack of disaster preparation: Despite the growing frequency of disasters, the federal Liberal-National government’s $4 billion Emergency Response Fund has hardly spent a cent on disaster recovery since the fund’s creation in 2019, just before the black summer bushfires. Just $150 million had been set aside for disaster-mitigation projects and much less than that has actually been spent.

By contrast, more than $400 billion has been handed to business during the pandemic and $250 billion has been allocated for military spending in preparations for a US-led war against China. While the government failed to assist residents for days, it rushed to send $70 million to NATO to buy weapons for Ukrainian forces as part of the escalating confrontation with Russia.

Inadequate and privatised infrastructure: Dams built in previous decades to protect populations against floods, such as Sydney’s Warragamba Dam and Brisbane’s Wivenhoe Dam, have been known to be inadequate for years. The Wivenhoe dam, completed in 1984, after terrible floods in 1974, has not met national safety guidelines for large dams since about 2002. Levees in rural cities such as Lismore are likewise sub-standard. Freeways, local roads, rail networks and drainage systems have proven inadequate as well, quickly being swamped. Corporate-controlled and privatised Internet and phone services have dangerously broken down, blacking out entire regions for days on end.

Housing development in flood-prone areas: Government figures blame ordinary people for supposedly choosing to live in vulnerable areas, but successive governments, at the behest of property developers, have allowed further housing projects in areas susceptible to floods. Because of soaring house prices and falling real wages, working-class families often have no option but to live in these low-lying areas. According to the Insurance Council of Australia, 2 to 3 percent of homes nationally are now in frequent flood zones and 15 percent are susceptible to flood. With about 10 million households in Australia, that equals 200,000 to 1.5 million households living in danger!

Prohibitive cost of disaster insurance: More and more residents living in these zones cannot afford or have been denied flood insurance coverage, leaving many flood victims facing financial ruin and possible homelessness. This insurance crisis will worsen as the companies hike up premiums again due to the floods. The response of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government has been to subsidise the insurance giants by giving them a $10 billion guarantee to cover any losses from cyclones in northern Australia.

Reliance on volunteers and the military: The chronically under-resourced SES agencies in each state, like the firefighting services in the bushfire crisis, depend almost entirely on volunteers who put their lives on the line without being paid. In NSW, with a land size almost 3.5 times that of the UK, the SES relies on some 9,000 volunteers, with just over 300 paid staff. In every major disaster, these services have been overwhelmed quickly, requiring people to take matters into their own hands.

Successive governments have exploited the lack of adequate civil disaster services to send in the troops to create the political climate for the use of the military to suppress social and political unrest. The Gillard Labor government mobilised more than 1,500 military personnel after the 2011 Brisbane floods, and the Morrison Coalition government has invoked emergency powers to do so again, as it did during the bushfire crisis.

Relief payments for business, pittances for residents: People whose homes have been damaged or destroyed have been offered a pittance—just $1,000 per adult and $400 per child in one-off disaster payments, plus possible 13-week income replacement payments. By contrast, Morrison and NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet jointly announced grants of up to $75,000 for primary producers and up to $50,000 for small businesses.

Climate change: Because of the heavy reliance of energy giants on fossil fuel revenues, the response of Australian governments, even compared to the totally inadequate measures taken internationally, is criminally irresponsible.

While individual extreme weather events cannot be traced directly to global warming, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report found that catastrophic flooding is becoming more likely. Scientific studies show that each 1C of heating due to greenhouse gas emissions allows the atmosphere to hold about 7 percent more moisture.

A socialist perspective

While governments have left residents to fend for themselves, however, ordinary people have come together, as they did in the bushfire calamity, to rescue victims and provide food, shelter and assistance to those in need, using Facebook and other social media platforms to organise independently.

This embryonic self-organisation by the working class needs to be informed by a socialist perspective and developed into a mass movement fighting to take political power in Australia and internationally. Workers need to establish their own rank-and-file committees in workplaces and working-class areas and neighbourhoods independent of the pro-capitalist parties and trade unions to fight for:

* The establishment of timely warning systems, including the expansion of meteorological and associated services, to cover the entire country and population.

* A vast expansion of paid civilian emergency and health services to respond to crises such as fires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic.

* The establishment of a national public insurance fund to compensate individual losses and provide for the reconstruction and rebuilding of communities.

* A massive expansion of flood protection infrastructure in a coordinated plan to prevent the inundation of flood-prone areas.

* The establishment of a resilient and comprehensive telecommunication network to guarantee timely warning and communications in times of emergency, including regional, rural and remote areas.

* Climate change is a global emergency that cannot be resolved on a local or national basis but requires an international, scientifically-based plan to halt and reverse global warming.

All of these measures come into conflict with a society dominated by the insatiable drive for private profit and the conflicting interests of national states, over and above the essential social needs of working people.

Politicians, corporations and the media will invariably dismiss such demands as “unrealistic” as there is no money. However, trillions of dollars in socially-produced wealth have been amassed in private hands—the fortunes of the billionaires have doubled in the pandemic—and billions are being spent on war preparations. The pressing social needs of the majority can and must be addressed by placing the banks, insurance companies, property developers and other corporate giants under working class ownership and democratic control.

The floods crisis, like the bushfire catastrophe and the COVID pandemic, demonstrates the need for the total reorganisation of society on a socialist basis so that it is planned rationally and democratically to protect health and lives, and meet social need.

The formation of independent rank-and-file committees is the basis for a political fight for a workers’ government to implement the necessary socialist measures. This means joining and building the Socialist Equality Party to provide the socialist and internationalist perspective to lead that struggle.

SEE

Murdering the dead: Amadeo Bordiga on capitalism and other disasters - Antagonism (libcom.org)

Female Off-road Motor Car Racer Breaks Barriers; Inspires Young Girls in Pakistan

A golden opportunity to restore species and ecosystems

It will take focus, dedication, co-ordination and huge finances, but it is achievable

SHAIKHA SALEM AL DHAHERI

An Arabian Oryx on Sir Bani Yas Island. Nothing symbolises our restoration efforts better than the Arabian Oryx. 

Silvia Razgova for The National

On World Environment Day last June, the UN General Assembly declared 2021-2030 to be the "decade on ecosystem restoration". Even though this call for concerted action to protect and restore our ecosystems was made when countries were still struggling with Covid-19, the pandemic had already reminded us of the value of biodiversity to our health and well-being.

Led by the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the declaration was a recognition that adequate progress on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals hadn't been made, and that we had failed collectively to address climate change. More importantly, however, It was a clarion call to put nature on the path to recovery.

There was good reason for this.

An estimated 75 per cent of the terrestrial environment and more than 60 per cent of the marine environment have been degraded globally. The degradation of land alone is estimated to affect the well-being of more than 3.2 billion people – or 40 per cent of the total global population – according to a report published by the Germany-based intergovernmental agency IPBES. These numbers are frightening, as we move further towards what’s been described as the Sixth Mass Extinction.

But while we all need to understand the severity of the problem, it’s not all doom and gloom. For good work is being done all over the world to tackle it. Take the example of Abu Dhabi itself, which has been at the forefront in the efforts to restore the Arabian Oryx, the Asian Houbara and the Scimitar-horned Oryx. These are conservation success stories both at the local and global levels.

Mariam Al Mheiri, the Minister of Climate Change and Environment, with Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary General, at the Sustainability Portal. Expo 2020 Dubai

Scientific knowledge and understanding should underpin any restoration and recovery project

These initiatives go back to the early 1970s when the UAE's Founding Father, Sheikh Zayed, initiated forestry and mangrove plantations and captive breeding programmes for endangered species. Since its establishment in 1996, the Environment Agency-Abu Dhabi (EAD) has done good work in these fields, thereby furthering the legacy of the late Sheikh Zayed.

Nothing symbolises our restoration efforts better than the Arabian Oryx, a flagship species of our desert landscape that has been brought back from the brink. Our collections, the largest in the world, have helped us in restoring this species not just in the country but elsewhere, too. As part of our regional restoration efforts, we have over the past few years translocated 60 Arabian Oryx to the Wadi Rum National Park and the Shumari Reserve in Jordan.

We have also re-introduced the Scimitar-horned Oryx to Chad – a remarkable feat, considering it had become extinct in the wild nearly two decades ago. With a healthy population of 400 individuals today, the initiative is considered one of the most ambitious and successful large mammal restoration programmes globally. The return of the species to the reserve, almost equal to the size of the UAE, is helping to restore the habitat and rejuvenate the entire ecosystem. It is also leading to the recovery of other species, besides providing employment and engagement opportunities for the local communities – the very essence of the "decade on restoration".

All the aforementioned species, from Arabia to Africa, are beacons of hope and among the finest examples of persistence and perseverance, which are fundamental to any restoration effort.

The recovery our fisheries is another success story, although it will be hard to emulate. We witnessed a dramatic recovery over a two-year period, with more than 57 per cent of fish caught sustainably in 2020, compared to less than 6 per cent in 2018.


There is clearly a determination to build back. Over the past two decades, we have planted more than 12 million mangroves in our marine areas, and seeded over four million seeds and planted more than 17,000 native Samar trees in our terrestrial areas.

Restoration and protection of mangroves are essential to climate change adaptation efforts. Etihad

We can’t afford to stop, however. And to keep moving, there needs to be a vision. The recently announced Abu Dhabi Mangroves Initiative is an example of such planning. The project will include establishing a nursery, planting half a million mangroves and making the emirate a hub for research and innovation. This is important, as restoration and protection of mangroves and other blue carbon ecosystems, such as seagrasses and saltmarshes, are essential to climate change adaptation efforts.

We are also working in other landscapes of the emirate to recover degraded areas and restore them into functioning ecosystems with species that are resilient to elevated temperatures and periodic droughts. We are doing this by using advanced plant genomics to develop new varieties of more tolerant species.

Restoration efforts must be directed and planned to protect our biodiversity, ensure ecological connectivity and ecosystem functioning. Restoring degraded areas and scaling them will also bring food security and societal benefits. We will not only identify critical ecosystems for restoration but will also invest resources to make it happen. Recovery, in our view, must rest on three prongs: ecology, economy and society.

I am confident that over the next decade, we will have restored our mangroves to acceptable levels, improved sustainable exploitation of fisheries by 70-80 per cent and restored our degraded coral reefs. The biggest challenge, however, will be to sustain ongoing initiatives and launch new ones. Ecosystem restoration is a slow process and could take longer than the nine years we have remaining for the ongoing initiatives to come to fruition.


Suprabha Seshan, plant conservationist and restoration ecologist, looks at the replantation of an epiphyte plant on a tree in Kerala's Wayanad District last year. AFP
MORE FROM SHAIKHA SALEM AL DHAHERI
The Emirates has all the tools for a green energy transition
A vision for the environment: looking ahead as an Emirati woman
We can provide housing for everyone, but we have to do it sustainably

The decade on restoration initiative has identified a 10-point plan, three of which are critical in my view.

First is long-term financing, without which such projects cannot endure. Developing models and scaling them will be key for initiatives around the globe to succeed. According to a UN assessment report, investment in nature needs to go from the current figure of $130 billion to about $330bn. Restoration efforts in Abu Dhabi will also need long-term financial support. We will ensure financing through public-private partnerships to attract investment besides tapping on individual philanthropy. One such example is the recently launched Etihad Airways Mangroves Programme in partnership with EAD, Jubail Island and the Storey Group.

Next, resources need to be allocated towards research innovation. Scientific knowledge and understanding should underpin these projects, considering they involve huge financial and human resources, besides leadership commitments.

Finally, it is important to share and celebrate restoration efforts. We need to tell successful stories in a compelling way and appreciate the driving forces behind them. We will take our Scimitar-horned Oryx and fisheries examples to the world. For we believe these stories need to be told. This is crucial to ensure that global leadership elsewhere understands this as well. The best way to do this is by using demonstration projects to show the benefits and return on investments, both for nature and for people.

We also need to listen to and learn from other successful practices around the globe.

Restoring ecosystems is a global biodiversity and climate change imperative that needs to be implemented with greater urgency than ever before. And I am truly honoured to be on the advisory board of this global effort. It is a both huge responsibility and a wonderful opportunity. Indeed, this is our chance to work together to halt and heal, and to protect and prosper – for our planet and for our species.

Published: March 06, 2022

Shaikha Salem Al Dhaheri
Dr Shaikha Salem Al Dhaheri is secretary-general of the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi

Controversial rock art in Amazon rainforest may depict extinct giants of the ice age

By Katie Hunt, CNN 

More than 12,000 years ago, South America was teeming with an astonishing array of ice age beasts -- giant ground sloths the size of a car, elephantine herbivores and a deerlike animal with an elongated snout.

© LASTJOURNEY Project

© LASTJOURNEY Project 

The camelid painting at the La Lindosa rock painting site in Colombia.

These extinct giants are among many animals immortalized in an 8-mile-long (13-kilometer-long) frieze of rock paintings at Serranía de la Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon rainforest -- art created by some of the earliest humans to live in the region, according to a new study.

"(The paintings) have the whole diversity of Amazonia. Turtles and fishes to jaguars, monkeys and porcupines," said study author Jose Iriarte, a professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom.

Iriate calls the frieze, which likely would have been painted over centuries, if not millennia, "the last journey," as he said it represents the arrival of humans in South America -- the last region to be colonized by Homo sapiens as they spread around the world from Africa, their place of origin. These pioneers from the north would have faced unknown animals in an unfamiliar landscape.

"They encountered these large-bodied mammals and they likely painted them. And while we don't have the last word, these paintings are very naturalistic and we're able to see morphological features of the animals," he said.

But the discovery of what scientists term "extinct megafauna" among the dazzlingly detailed paintings is controversial and contested.

Other archaeologists say the exceptional preservation of the paintings suggest a much more recent origin and that there are other plausible candidates for the creatures depicted. For example, the giant ground sloth identified by Iriarte and his colleagues could in fact be a capybara -- a giant rodent common today across the region.

© LASTJOURNEY Project The giant sloth painting at La Lindosa.

Final word?

While Iriarte concedes the new study is not the final word in this debate, he is confident that they have found evidence of early human encounters with some of the vanished giants of the past.

The team identified five such animals in the paper: a giant ground sloth with massive claws, a gomphothere (an elephantlike creature with a domed head, flared ears and a trunk), an extinct lineage of horse with a thick neck, a camelid like a camel or llama, and a three-toed ungulate, or hoofed mammal, with a trunk.

He said they are well known from fossilized skeletons, enabling paleontologists to reconstruct what they must have looked like. Iriarte and his colleagues were then able to identify their defining features in the paintings.

While the red pigments use to make the rock art have not yet been directly dated, Iriarte said that ocher fragments found in layers of sediment during excavations of the ground beneath the painted vertical rock faces dated to 12,600 years ago.

The hope is to directly date the red pigment used to paint the miles of rock, but dating rock art and cave paintings is notoriously tricky. Ocher, an inorganic mineral pigment that contains no carbon, can't be dated using radiocarbon dating techniques. The archaeologists are hoping the ancient artists mixed the ocher with some kind of binding agent that will allow them to get an accurate date. The results of this investigation are expected possibly later this year.

© LASTJOURNEY Project

Further study of the paintings could shed light on why these giant animals went extinct. Iriarte said no bones of the extinct creatures were found during archaeological digs in the immediate area -- suggesting perhaps they weren't a source of food for the people who created the art.

The research published in the journal Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society B on Monday.

'She was chained like a dog': The voiceless victims of Asia's sex slavery trade

MARCH 06, 2022ByJOSEPH LAMSOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

A handout photo. Sylvia Yu Friedman takes a break from interviewing survivors in Kunming, China, in 2011.

South China Morning Post

On a cold winter’s night in January 2013, Sylvia Yu Friedman drove an hour out of Kunming, China, to a small, dim-lit market in Yunnan province, on the border of Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.

She and two other women were there with a mission: to film inside one of the most notorious red light districts in southern China, one which sources had told her was home to hundreds of young women – some of whom were as young as 16 years old – who had been trafficked from neighbouring countries.

At about 10pm on a weekend, she walked through the market with a camera hidden in the shoulder strap of her backpack and mobile phone in hand. Her counterparts didn’t follow.

Yu Friedman walked fast and her heart beat even faster. Although she had spent barely a few minutes down the narrow dead end of the market, her presence had caught the eye of the local heavies.

Just as she hopped into the car, two mamasans and three young men appeared out of nowhere and surrounded their vehicle, demanding they get out and hand over their phones.

“They told us, ‘we know you took photos and you’re posting them on Weibo. Get out of the car’,” Yu Friedman recalls.

“At the moment I thought I was dead … I really thought my life was over.”

A handout photo. Sylvia in Kunming in 2010 on one of her trips to interview survivors of sex trafficking.
Photo: South China Morning Post

Yu Friedman threw the camera from her backpack onto the back seat of the car as she got out and deleted the footage from her iPhone in a matter of seconds.

For 15 minutes a confrontation ensued until suddenly someone shouted: “The police are coming!”

Footage from the incident would later form part of a documentary that was aired in Hong Kong titled Sex Slaves in China, which recorded the price of women trafficked as between 10,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan (US$1,600-US$3,200) depending on how attractive the buyer deemed them.

The story is part of a new book published by Yu Friedman late last year.

A Long Road to Justice tells the stories of a two-decade career in Asia, which began in journalism and later shifted to philanthropy for ultra-high net worth family offices, all while campaigning and fighting for the rights of women forced into a line of work where they had few rights.

Yu Friedman’s new book is the third she’s published, and her second on sex trafficking in Asia.

Her first book, Silenced No More: Voices of 'Comfort Women', published on Aug 5, 2015, explores the history of thousands of women who were trafficked into sex slavery by the Imperial Japanese military before and during World War II.

A handout photo. Sylvia Yu Friedman is speaking with a group of migrant women at a non-profit in Beijing in 2007. 
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

Yu Friedman’s latest work is quite different to her first, she says. In A Long Road to Justice, she asks the reader to join her on her journey through interviewing victims of trafficking.

She writes about the stories of victims as she saw them and the feelings she experienced while completing her work.

“I share how I felt when I met these victims so that the reader can identify with me and my journey because they may not be able to identify with victims or survivors, but they read and live vicariously through my experience,” she says.

The new book is also a story of coming to terms with her own identity. It is now in development to be made into a feature film.

“I also delve into my personal experiences as well; hitting rock bottom in my personal life; exploring my self-rejection of my Korean heritage,” she says.

“There’s a thread of generational trauma not only in me but in just about every Korean and Chinese person that I’ve met,” she says. “That’s because the wounds of the war were never healed, they were never resolved, which has led to generational bitterness.”

While her journey is present, it is only one part of the bigger picture she paints of trafficking in Asia.

Says Yu Friedman: “I felt like it was a letter of love and compassion to tell the stories of the voiceless but also the frontline workers and the unsung heroes who sacrifice a lot to help these people.”

A handout photo. The front cover of Sylvia Yu Friedman’s A Long Road to Justice.
Photo: South China Morning Post

The following excerpts from A Long Road to Justice: Stories from the Frontlines in Asia are published with permission from Penguin Random House SEA:

Chapter 1: Near-death experience in Kunming

It was my first time in such a remote red-light district. I sensed the danger. I sensed the women were controlled and not free to happily walk away, and yet I was walking freely outside. This paradox was inconceivable and heartbreaking. I reflected on the unjust nature of life.

It is just a matter of chance where one is born and into which family. This and a host of other circumstances beyond the control of these women had led them into a destiny of unimaginable trauma and enslavement.

I pretended to look at my phone but felt weighed down by the oppressive spirit of the place. What was I doing here? Amy had advised that I film in this particular alley, pretending to be a tourist who had lost her way. I depended on Amy for every step I took but now that I was here, it seemed too dangerous, too close for comfort; I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was possibly risking my own life.

But I told myself I needed to expose this wicked racket.

I felt a rush of adrenaline as I held out my phone camera and walked by that surreal scene of window after window of young scantily-clad girls who looked like anguished mannequins with painted faces. I felt victorious once I had captured the undeniable images on both my phone and the small camera I had hidden in my backpack.

No one had been able to get this on film before. It was a weighty coup that would expose evil. After feeling euphoric for a few seconds and thinking that I had outsmarted the gangsters, I walked back calmly to the jeep where Mary and Tina were waiting for me.

All of a sudden, we were surrounded by three thugs in their twenties and menacing mama-sans in their forties.

Instantly, I regretted putting my life in the hands of Amy and Mary. I felt I made a huge mistake and I was going to pay with my life. The men were dressed in black. Their eyes bulged out of their sockets. They had hard lines etched on their foreheads. I suspected the two mama-sans were former prostitutes who had clawed their way through the ranks to become brothel managers.

A handout photo. Sylvia with a street child in Poipet, Cambodia.
Photo: South China Morning Post

I wasn’t sure who scared me more: the middle-aged women or the young male gangsters. They screamed at us in Chinese, saying, ‘Give me your phone!

Show me your phone! We saw you taking photos and posting them on Weibo!’ They were screaming and pointing their fingers an inch away from our faces. I panicked and began sweating. I felt nauseated.

Somehow, I had been able to take off the small camera from my backpack and throw it into the car-seat pocket. I hastily moved almost numb fingers across my phone and deleted the footage in a matter of seconds. This was a miracle in and of itself since I was not very familiar with my iPhone.

“What do we do? What do we do?” we asked in unison. The confusion and panic mingled together, choking us and, I’m convinced, cutting off the blood supply to our brains. Mary didn’t have any answers either, and I felt like she was ready to throw me to the wolves.

Tina, the driver, froze and then suggested we get out of the car. She was terrified. In hindsight, that was a mistake. I was furious with her. But we had no idea whether or not these men had weapons or if they would have broken our windows and slashed our tires.

Foolishly, I got out of the car after mixed signals from my accomplices. Mary crumbled and was barely coherent. Tina seemed like she was going to escape and leave Mary and me behind. I felt her sense of self-preservation kicking in.

I showed them my phone and said I had nothing. But they continued to scream obscenities and accused me of posting photos of their brothels on Weibo.

Then, unexpectedly, in the midst of the screaming, a man yelled, ‘The police are coming! The police!’ With these words, they scattered like cockroaches under a harsh spotlight. It was freakish. It was my first miracle.

A handout photo. Sylvia teaching wartime Japanese sex slavery at the City University in Hong Kong in March 2018.
Photo: South China Morning Post

Chapter 3: ‘He chained me like a dog’

Back in 2011 before my television documentary filming trip, I visited Door of Hope’s shelter in Yunnan to interview some of the survivors and learnt that two of the thirty girls there had been sold as brides to poor farmers but were able to escape.

I spoke with one of these young women, Mei Li, who had an aloof, tough demeanour and seemed sceptical of my intentions. She was short and portly and had caramel highlights in her chin-length hair. She wore eyeshadow and lipstick on her heart-shaped face that made her look older.

Mei Li was sold as a fourteen-year-old bride, then locked up in chains like a dog by her elderly husband and contracted HIV later when selling her body. My heart felt heavy but I braced myself for the sad retelling of her tale.

With tears in her eyes and almost as if she were having traumatic flashbacks, she told me about what had happened:

“She knocked on a door on the third floor. A man with a cigarette in his mouth opened the door and eyed me up and down. She said, ‘Here she is, she had dinner a few hours ago.’ And then she walked away towards the stairs. I called out, feeling desperate, ‘Auntie, where are you going? I need to go home!’ The man was wearing a black turtleneck and grey pants. He pried me from the door and forced me into a room and locked the door.

Mei Li in 2011 in Kunming, China.
PHOTO: Sylvia Yu Friedman

“I panicked and couldn’t breathe. I screamed for days. There was no clock, no phone. I looked for food and water in the closet. There was nothing. ‘Let me out, let me out, I want to go home,’ I shouted and pounded at the door. All I could hear was the television and smell the cigarette smoke.

‘I’m hungry,’ I shouted, but my voice was strained. I was starved for days, and later learnt that I was there for two weeks. I was given water occasionally and had to use the wastebasket to relieve myself. By the time a few men came in the room, I could barely move from the floor. I was in a fetal position on my side. ‘Help me,’ I whimpered. ‘I need to go home’.”

I was gripped and was in shock for her. How could this happen in our day and age? Are there monsters out there who would trick and kidnap a girl like this? But there was an evil familiarity, a sense that I had heard this same story before.

The faces of the elderly women survivors of Japanese military sex slavery, euphemistically known as ‘comfort women’, flashed before my eyes. Most of these women were Mei Li’s age – fourteen or fifteen years old – when they were deceived into thinking they were going to work as a nurse or factory worker. Instead, they were taken to a brothel and raped repeatedly.

The cycle keeps repeating with no end in sight. I felt this was a profound moment for me, like a confirmation of my calling as a documenter of these atrocities and human rights abuses against women.

A handout photo. Sylvia Yu Friedman with survivor Kim Soon-duk in Washington DC in 2001.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

It was hard to write on paper about the violence she experienced. It was unbearable, and I could see the pain in her eyes. I hoped that there was some kind of release and healing as she unburdened herself. But it felt like I had taken her yoke, and it was crushing. I told myself that I had to really stand in her shoes to be able to write her story with power – this gave me the motivation to keep on going.

“I was fourteen. Only when I went to this man’s small and musty home – this man who was old enough to be my grandfather – did I realise to my horror and disgust that I had been sold as a bride to this wretched and violent man. He was a farmer, and we all knew that men like him couldn’t afford to marry the traditional way.

“‘I’ve paid for you. Now you’re my wife,’ he grunted. He chained me like a dog in one of the rooms. He unchained me when he wanted to use me’.”

A handout photo. Sylvia Yu Friedman wearing a hanbok, a Korean traditional dress.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.