Saturday, June 20, 2020

UK authorities detain five cruise ships over welfare concerns for crew

By Alice Tidey • last updated: 20/06/2020

The Columbus ship, operated by Cruise and Maritime Voyages (CMV) - Copyright Flickr/kees torn

Five cruised ships from the same company have been detained by British authorities over concerns for crew welfare.

Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) revealed that it inspected six ships from Global Cruise Lines Limited on Friday and that five have been detained.

"Surveyors found a number of expired and invalid Seafarers Employment Agreements, late payments of wages and crews who had been on board for over 12 months," the MCA said in a statement.

Four of the ships are flagged with the Bahamas and one with Portugal.

A spokesman for Cruise and Maritime Voyages (CMV), which operate the ships, said that the company "cooperated fully" with investigators.

"The MCA has identified some issues relating to expired crew contracts and crew being onboard in excess of 12 months. Both issues occurred as a result of the enforced lockdown period and the Covid-19 travel restrictions for some countries. They also identified recent temporary delays in the payment of wages which were due within the last week and have already been corrected by CMV," he added.

"The health, safety and welfare of all their passengers and crew is CMV’s top priority. CMV, as have many other cruise lines, has faced an unprecedented emerging humanitarian issue as many crew members became stranded on cruise ships as borders closed as a result of the global outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. CMV has worked hard to repatriate as many crew members as possible and has been unable to repatriate all crew members due to the travel restrictions," he also said.

Some 600 of the six ships' crew are Indians, according to Kshitij Thakur, a lawmaker in the state of Maharashtra.

Thakur demanded in a letter sent to the Indian government that the sailors, who "have been stuck in foreign waters for almost 90 days", be repatriated as soon as possible.

The All Indian Seafarers Union added in its own letter to the New Delhi government that many of the sailors onboard one of the vessels, the Astoria, had gone on hunger strike and staged a peaceful protest in a plea for help.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) described seafarers earlier this week as both "the unsung heroes of the pandemic" and the "collateral victims of the crisis".

More than 80 per cent of the world's trade by volume, including vital food, medical goods, raw material and manufacturer goods, are transported around the world by sea in vessels staffed by a global workforce.

These seafarers, who spend several weeks or months at sea, are often flown between their home countries and ports of departure and arrival. But travel restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus, have left tens of thousands of them stranded on ships, or unable to join ships, the IMO said.

"Repeated extensions of their contracts have now reached a level where this cannot continue without serious consequences for the health of seafarers and consequentially, for the safety of the ships they operate," the IMO warned.

It estimated that starting from mid-June as many as 300,000 seafarers each month will require international flights to enable crew changeovers and that about half of them will need to be repatriated home by aircraft while the other half join ships.

An additional 70,000 cruise ship staff are also currently awaiting repatriation, it said.
Fernando Simón: Spain’s top scientist becomes unlikely hero of nation’s COVID-19 crisis
By Lucia Riera Bosqued & Natalie Huet • last updated: 15/06/2020

With celebrities unable to reach their usual audiences, and politicians under increased scrutiny, public health experts are stealing the limelight.

Previously unknown virologists and epidemiologists have become household names in a number of countries, where citizens anxiously await their assessment and advice on the unfolding pandemic.

Dr Fernando Simón, Spain's health emergency chief, won over the nation with his plain-talking, no-nonsense approach. With a hoarse voice and wild hair, he has been the face of its bruising fight against COVID-19.

His straightforward and detailed updates on the evolution of the epidemic, combined with empathy and patience, have turned him into a pop icon for many Spaniards.

Social media is awash with montages of his face, and memes of his most memorable moments on camera – including a coughing fit during a press conference, which he said was not due to the coronavirus, but because he had eaten an almond.

There are even T-shirts and tote bags to his image.

Simón is well aware of the attention and has a message for those using his now-familiar face.

"I’m delighted that people are taking advantage of my image to set up a business that they can see as profitable... that’s fine by me. What I would like more, if possible, is that perhaps they could donate a small percentage of those benefits to NGOs," Simón said on Friday.

Simón had a rough time when he was accused by conservative politicians and media of having withheld information about the pandemic in order to allow International Women’s Day demonstrations to take place on March 8.

But when he tested positive for the coronavirus in late March, his case sparked a nationwide outpouring of sympathy.

Three months in the hearts of Spaniards have now also earned him a name overseas, with the New York Times writing he had cut "an endearing scientific hero figure."

VIDEO 
https://www.euronews.com/embed/1124766


 It’s not OK: 
White supremacy and Australia’s security services

JENNIFER PERCIVAL


NSW police officers at Sydney Town Hall during a rally in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, 12 June 2020 (Don Arnold/Getty Images)

Published 16 Jun 2020

A small gesture raises big questions about white supremacist  ideology in Australian police and security forces.


At the Black Lives Matter protest in Sydney last Friday night, a NSW police officer was caught on camera flashing the “OK” hand gesture as he passed by a group. This act has ignited a debate about whether or not the officer was signalling support for white supremacist ideology, as this hand gesture has been co-opted by far-right white supremacist groups. NSW Police issued a statement that the officer was clearly signalling to a group of women to show that the night was going “OK” as he was wearing a mask, and that he was not aware that this gesture was linked to white supremacists.


Footage showing a NSW police officer making the "OK" hand symbol, which has been co-opted by the alt-right, during a response to Friday night's Black Lives Matter protest has been circulated on social media. https://t.co/Wj00RfETkp
— SBS News (@SBSNews) June 13, 2020

As with the case of ISIS’ co-option of the Tawhid one-fingered salute, context is everything when it comes to symbology. The “OK” hand gesture has been used innocently in various contexts for years: in scuba diving to signal to a dive buddy that all is fine; in Auslan for various meanings; and, from personal experience, as part of military “bar games”. Whether or not the NSW Police officer was using the symbol in a purely apolitical way is for internal investigation to decide.

But the episode does highlight important questions that NSW Police, and indeed all of Australia’s security services, should be asking. Firstly, is there a problem of white supremacy within their ranks? And secondly, given the context of the night, should officers be more aware of white supremacist ideology and symbology?The US has a demonstrable problem with infiltration of far-right actors into its security services. According to recent research conducted by The Soufan Center, two of the most prominent white supremacist groups, the Atomwaffen Division and the Rise Above Movement, have US military veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts within their ranks.

In recent testimony to the US Congress, Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) outlined some of the ways in which far-right groups can disrupt the cohesion and command structure of security services. He determined the problem to be twofold: actors joining the institutions with the intent to disrupt, or serving personnel becoming sympathetic to or joining far-right groups. While the number of far-right extremists in the ranks of these institutions is small, these actors create “harm far disproportionate to their number”. Pitcavage said following recent monitoring, the ADL:


“believes the number of extremists in the military has increased due to a higher percentage of white supremacists attempting to join the military and the development of white supremacist leanings among some currently serving personnel”.

But does Australia have the same problem with white supremacy in its security services and democratic institutions? It is not known. Despite ASIO Director General Mike Burgess’ warning that the risk from far-right groups is real and growing, very few academic studies have been conducted into the structure, ideology and strategy of white supremacist groups here.

An investigation conducted by Nino Bucci of the ABC showed that at least five Australian citizens, including former members of the Australian Defence Force (ADF), with links to US-based transnational far-right group Atomwaffen Division, travelled to Ukraine to participate in combat operations there. Within Australian politics, there has been an attempt by far-right group the Lad’s Society to infiltrate the Young Nationals to influence their agenda. Additionally, Fraser Anning, the former One Nation Senator, has links to known far-right extremist Blair Cottrell and attended his United Patriots Front rally in Melbourne.


Despite ASIO Director General Mike Burgess’ warning that the risk from far-right groups is real and growing, very few academic studies have been conducted into the structure, ideology and strategy of white supremacist groups here.

It is also important to note what is happening in New Zealand, as many of the far-right, white supremacist groups are trans-Tasman. The NZ Army recently charged one serving soldier with breaches of National Security laws; a second soldier is under consideration. Both soldiers have known links to far-right, anti-Islam groups, such as the domestic group Action Zealandia and the transnational white supremacist group Blood and Honour. Both soldiers have links to Australian far-right bloggers the Dingoes.

One academic study conducted by Charles Miller of the Australian National University into attitudes towards Islam within the ADF found that anti-Islam bias within the service was high, even among those who had received cultural sensitivity training. Miller’s work was not looking for examples of extremism per se, and therefore cannot be used to state definitively that there is evidence of white supremacy within the ADF, but if it is found to be the case, as Mark Pitcavage outlined above, that anti-Islam, white supremacist actors are targeting security service personnel, then there is potentially fertile ground to recruit from.

As such, Australia’s security services would benefit from greater awareness of the structure, ideology and tactics of the far-right extremist groups operating within Australia and their transnational links, in order to protect the services’ impartiality and to ensure that their actions are not taken out of context in future.


Rise of the SWAT team: Routine police work in Canada is now militarized


Members of the police SWAT team gather outside a small apartment building in Montréal in 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
Kevin Walby, University of Winnipeg and Brendan Roziere, University of Manitoba
The militarization of United States police forces has received a lot of attention in recent years, especially after high profile incidents in places like the Missouri town of Ferguson and other police shootings across the U.S.
Scholars have tended to focus on these U.S. shootings, overlooking Canadian cases when forming their understanding of the issue. But without Canadian-focused data and research, we’re at risk of overlooking the massive militarization that has been occurring among Canada’s major police forces.
Our research examines militarization within Canadian police forces over the last decade. With 12 cities that are home to more than 500,000 people, and at least 22 police services that each employ 500 or more officers, it’s important to look at policing trends in Canada’s major urban centres.
We studied 10 large and medium-sized Canadian police forces, comprising eight municipal police forces, one provincial police force and one federal police force from across seven different provinces. Using freedom-of-information (FOI) requests, we obtained data on the operational dimensions of SWAT team use.
Deployments of SWAT teams — special weapons and tactics units — have risen in major Canadian cities and are higher in some cases than those by U.S. public police. Based on our research, we can see that militarization has been normalized within Canada’s largest police services. SWAT teams, once considered a last-resort option for police forces, are now being used in routine areas of policing.

A community activist tries to persuade a group of protesters to move back as police in riot gear watch protesters in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 13, 2014. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

2,100 per cent increase in SWAT deployments

The most substantial finding is the enormous rise in the average number of deployments by tactical units. In 1980, the average yearly number of deployments for Canadian tactical units was about 60 total per unit. Our results show the average yearly number of deployments for Canadian tactical units is now approximately 1,300 per unit, an increase of roughly 2,100 per cent in 37 years.
Even among SWAT teams whose deployments have decreased at some point in the last five years, none that we looked at saw similar decreases to their number of assigned officers. So while their deployments may have decreased, the size of their teams have not.
As criminologist Peter Kraska has argued, the paramilitary subculture embraced by SWAT teams is influential on police officers, and tricky to scale back once normalized.
In Canada, there is no national policy or law regulating SWAT team conduct or growth. Therefore it’s no surprise we found that figures for SWAT team deployments are not monolithic.

What the numbers say

Though SWAT team deployments in Vancouver and Ottawa generally fluctuated between 100 and 200 times each year, they deployed fewer times than teams in other jurisdictions.
Deployments of other SWAT teams were higher in number. The FOI requests showed that the Ontario Provincial Police’s (OPP) Emergency Response Team (ERT) and the Winnipeg Police Service’s (WPS) Tactical Support Team (TST) deployed at their their highest rates in 2016, with more than 2,000 and 3,000 deployments respectively.
The information provided by the OPP further revealed that their tactical force has consistently deployed at just under 1,900 times to somewhat over 2,000 times each year since 2007.
Deployment statistics extrapolated from the Winnipeg force’s daily occurrence reports revealed almost 500 deployments of their SWAT team in 2013 and almost 3,400 in 2016. While this appears to suggest an extraordinary increase, we believe that this reflects a limit of the data, and that Winnipeg’s TST was deployed far more frequently in 2013 than is suggested by the report.
Deployments of the Calgary Police Service’s (CPS) Tactical Unit revealed a somewhat unique case in our research. Although the unit deployed at a similarly high rate to those of the OPP and Winnipeg in 2007, its deployments declined in each examined year to just over 600 in 2016.

Drug warrants, suspicious incidents, traffic violations

If SWAT team deployments were limited to only those situations requiring their equipment and skills, such as hostage-takings and terror threats, there would perhaps be less cause for concern. But similar to previous research conducted in the U.S., we have found this isn’t the reality of Canadian SWAT teams. Instead, routine policing represented the majority of SWAT team use.
SWAT teams are increasingly being used by public police for routine activities such as executing warrants, traffic enforcement, community policing and responding to mental health crises and domestic disturbances.
The consequences of militarization fall disproportionately on minority groups, those with mental health issues and those exercising democratic rights associated with political expression.
Canadian police forces have been largely silent on the expansion of their SWAT teams, though some have suggested the expansion produces greater value to taxpayers. Meanwhile, SWAT team budgets climb ever higher as their use expands.
Despite the overall decline in the Calgary tactical unit’s deployments by 2016, almost one third of them were for warrants, which remained steady at around 200-250 instances per year.
The Ottawa Police Service tactical unit executed approximately 100 warrants each year, about 70 per cent of the unit’s total deployments, a large proportion drug-related.
The Winnipeg unit executed almost 250 warrants in 2016, less than in 2013, yet more than most other SWAT teams. Warrant work did not make up a large proportion of deployments for either the OPP’s tactical unit or Winnipeg’s, though it was noticeable.
SWAT teams regularly engage in routine policing, including responding to minor offences or even non-criminal incidents. The Calgary tactical unit deployed almost 300 times in response to various “dispatch codes” in 2007, as well as approximately 200 times each to “disturbances” and “suspicious” incidents.
Deployments in these three categories accounted for nearly 45 per cent of the unit’s total deployments during that year, and continued to represent as much as 30 per cent by 2016.

The Regina Police task force unit is described on its website as: ‘Trained in covert entries (into a building), dynamic entries, high-risk warrant service (drug-search warrant), hostage rescue and resolving barricaded-person situations.’ Regina police website

Deployments for other minor offences, including noise complaints, drug offences, property crimes, traffic violations and motor vehicle collisions represented almost one third of all deployments in 2007, and almost 15 per cent even at their lowest point in 2016.

Winnipeg has high deployments

The Winnipeg tactical unit was the most engaged in community policing. Nearly 100 instances of “special attentions” or “hot spot” deployments by the tactical support team are recorded in the 2016 daily occurrence report, as well as a substantial number of deployments in response to noise complaints, traffic incidents and disturbances.
SWAT team deployments in response to individuals with mental health issues, suicide threats and well-being checks were also common. The Calgary tactical unit was called to more than 130 incidents in 2007; while decreasing each year, the unit still responded to more than 60 such incidents in 2016.
By contrast, the Winnipeg tactical unit has responded to an increasing number of incidents. There were fewer than 20 suicide threats and well-being checks recorded in the 2013 daily occurrence report; in the 2016 report, there were almost 300 such deployments.
Some entries included notes that provided insight into the Winnipeg unit’s strategy for handling such occurrences that involved confronting suicidal individuals and gaining their compliance.
Although the OPP’s tactical unit responded to few calls of this nature, it responded similarly by assisting street-level officers in bringing individuals with known or suspected mental health issues into custody on several occasions.
Given that SWAT teams are the most heavily armed and armoured police units, it is concerning that they have a significant role in responding to individuals suffering from mental health issues.

Future for policing in Canada?

While Peter Kraska found that deployments of American SWAT teams in the 1980s and ‘90s were increasing each year,, the deployment data for Canadian SWAT teams shows a less steady rise. This should not be taken to mean that SWAT teams do not play an active role in policing in Canada, or that Canadian police forces are not becoming militarized.
The Canadian SWAT teams in this research have consistently deployed at a higher rate than was observed by Kraska and Victor Kappeler of urban SWAT teams at their highest point in the 1990s.
More significant is that there was strong evidence suggesting Canadian SWAT teams are routinely being used in reactive and proactive work that falls outside their intended function — and frequently outside of what is revealed to the public.
In some cases, the most notable being Winnipeg’s tactical unit, the findings show SWAT teams are being used in routine patrol work and as part of their police service’s community policing strategy. The involvement of SWAT teams in such activities highlights their expanding role in policing, suggesting a high degree of normalization which is indicative of militarization.
There is no meaningful oversight for normalization and expansion of police militarization across the U.S. and our findings suggest a similar case in Canada.
Militarization does not merely affect interactions between the state and criminal offenders, it changes what policing is by changing what police officers do.
The financial and social costs of using SWAT teams are also concerning. Their use in routine policing, and even in warrant execution, should be declared a failed public policy and scaled back immediately.The Conversation
Kevin Walby, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg and Brendan Roziere, Law student, Robson Hall, University of Manitoba
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
How police departments can identify and oust killer cops

Temitope Oriola
Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Alberta


June 10, 2020


The global condemnation of the death of George Floyd, one of the latest in a constellation of officer-involved deaths of unarmed civilians, has grown into a worldwide social movement for disbanding or defunding police.

At the far end of the debate, there are those calling for abolishing the police altogether. On the other hand, there are those wishing to defund the police. This means shifting significant material resources from police departments to social services for issues such as mental health.

In cases of mental distress or welfare checks, for example, social service providers intervene rather than police, who have proven ill-equipped to deal with people in mental distress. 
Protesters demonstrate against police brutality in Nairobi, Kenya, on June 8, 2020. The protest against police brutality in Kenya was in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. (AP Photo/Khalil Senosi)

There is growing acknowledgment that the attitude of officers towards the human rights of suspects needs to change, as do the numbers of police-involved killings. The research on excessive use of force by police and the sociological context and psychological characteristics of killer cops point to useful policy measures.
Psychological traits and screening

Killer cops and those who routinely mistreat civilians tend to be action-oriented. Research suggests that they are prone to boredom and suffer from major personality disorders. These include mood swings, impulsivity, lack of empathy, narcissism and anti-social personal disorder. Many of these traits begin early in life

Demonstrators march on Toronto Police Headquarters to protest the death of Sammy Yatim in Toronto in August 2013. Yatim was shot by police during a confrontation on a streetcar a month earlier. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

Diversity workshops, training or cultural sensitivity have limited utility to help such officers. The primary solution is to not hire them in the first place. This speaks to the need for greater psychological screening by police organizations.

A 2014 report by former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci, submitted to Toronto Police Service following the death of Sammy Yatim in July 2013, calls for “screening out psychopathology and screening in for desirable traits such as emotional intelligence, empathy, tolerance of diversity, and patience.”
Hire more women

Women are less likely to support use of force than men. My collaborative research in Alberta shows that women are less likely to support use of so-called less-than-lethal force options like conducted energy weapons.

The evidence in support of reducing deadly force by hiring more women in police departments is overwhelming. Female officers are less likely to use (excessive) force as they deploy de-escalation techniques and engage verbally. 

Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields, left, is seen speaking during a news conference in January 2018. Shields has been lauded for wading into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters and listening to them, and for swiftly terminating police officers who assaulted demonstrators. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Police departments with a reasonable number of women tend to record lower levels of officer-involved killings. However, the number of women is important. Female officers in male-dominated police departments may exhibit hyper-masculine traits in an attempt to fit in. They may be just as brutal as men.

There is no agreement on what constitutes a reasonable number. A gender-balanced police service should be ultimate priority. I suggest a minimum threshold of 40 per cent female officers.

University graduate-only officers


Officers without university degrees populate the ranks of killer cops. Officers with university degrees are more likely to request mental health support for suspects and demonstrate a higher appreciation for the complexity of social life, individual problems and subtleties of working in an increasingly diverse environment.

Officers with university degrees exhibit stronger verbal skills, effective communication and empathy. The Iacobucci report recommends recruiting officers from “specific educational programs” such as nursing and social work in order to foster “a compassionate response to people in crisis.”

Ethno-racial diversity

Evidence from the United States is less settled regarding racial characteristics of killer cops. However, most studies find that white, non-Hispanic officers are more likely to shoot or kill civilians. A few studies suggest Black officers are more likely to shoot and kill civilians. These have been criticized for poor methodology.

In Canada, most killer cops appear to be white men. An ethno-racially diverse police service is integral for building public trust and inclusivity.

Training

Much of the current training for many police organizations focuses on deployment of lethal force or marksmanship. That’s a waste of time and sets up officers for frustration given today’s realities. Once out of training, officers realize that people get meaninglessly drunk, abusers beat their spouses and citizens experience psychotic episodes.

Somehow, the police are required to respond to all these matters. These are in fact some of the most common issues brought to police attention. These scenarios may be frustrating for action-oriented officers. Action-oriented officers may see only moral failing in each case and respond with disdain and unnecessary force.

Read more: Rise of the SWAT team: Routine police work in Canada is now militarized

The professional officer will see “clients” in need of bureaucratic assistance and attempt to de-escalate.

There is a need to overhaul officer training and extend it to at least one full year of rigorous classroom engagement with human rights, mental health issues and diversity, among others.
Accountability

The main officer involved in George Floyd’s death had 17 complaints in his file. Three of those involved shootings, with one death. This is a poor disciplinary record.

This May 31, 2020 photo provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff shows former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was arrested in the death of George Floyd. (Hennepin County Sheriff via AP)

Such officers make policing more difficult and dangerous. The Minneapolis Police Department bears responsibility for keeping such a person in service.

Undesirable people may sometimes enter into police service but must be promptly removed once their engagement with colleagues, superiors and the public begins to reflect certain troubling patterns.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) charged two officers in June 2020. They were the first charges brought forward against officers by ASIRT since its establishment in 2008. This is mind-boggling given incidents of excessive use of force in Alberta. Tolerating errant cops is dangerous for public trust.


The way forward

I propose a two-pronged policy — a “kill-and-go” policy and “three strikes policy” — for police accountability.

Kill-and-go means any officer who kills an unarmed civilian or a suspect who had a weapon but did not deploy it against an officer is dismissed from service and prosecuted.


The three strikes proposal is similar to the disused California anti-crime law of the same name. Any officer involved in three excessive use-of-force incidents in which a civilian is mistreated and sustains injuries is automatically dismissed from service and prosecuted. There should be no expiry to each strike across an officer’s career.

Policing is also a well-paying occupation relative to entry qualifications and length of training, at least in Canada and many parts of the U.S.

The RCMP notes that the annual salary of a newly sworn-in officer is $53,144 and increases to $86,110 within 36 months of service. There are postdoctoral fellows working on life-saving biomedical research who make less than $50,000 a year, despite possessing hard-earned PhDs. The government and public should get value for the money spent on police by selecting appropriate people.


Author
 

Temitope Oriola

Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Alberta
Disclosure statement
Temitope Oriola's research team received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for the study.
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Kashmir Covid response sparks fear and suspicion

For many Kashmiris, lockdown and quarantine measures have increased unwanted confrontation with Indian security forces.


Indian paramilitary soldiers stand guard in central Srinagar, 10 June 2020 (Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images)
 
LIKE #ISRAEL ILLEGAL OCCUPATION FORCES IN GAZA 
UN CONTROLLED KASHMIR IS OCCUPIED BY INDIA

SHEIKH SAQIB Published 15 Jun 2020  
India

India’s high-handedness in Kashmir amid a global pandemic has further exacerbated a tense situation in the restive valley. The latest causality of harsh policies has been people, mostly students, locked up in quarantine centres across Kashmir.

In March, when Kashmiri students studying outside India started landing back in Kashmir because of Covid-19 shutdowns, many of them tried to avoid admission to compulsory quarantine facilities for a 15-day stay. The thought of being held under the strict watch of state officials had students bordering on panic, and led parents and guardians, waiting outside the airport building, to stage a chain of protests against the ruling.

This fear had obvious roots. India’s handling of Kashmir has long been questioned, particularly since 1987, when it rigged a local election, paving the way for a secessionist movement in Kashmir. Today, India rules Kashmir through the presence of nearly a million armed troops, by some estimates. Conflict in Kashmir has cost at least 40,000 lives since a separatist insurgency ignited in the 1980s, with thousands of disappearances associated with Indian security forces. There are also the less visible but debilitating costs of psychological trauma and other lifelong disabilities.


Going public has become a necessary way to pressure local officials, who would otherwise almost always turn a blind to the daily tribulations.

India’s response to dissent in Kashmir has instilled trenchant suspicion in the local population. This helps explain why people worry about the treatment of their children at the hands of the administration, even in a public health crisis. Such suspicions evoked memories of last August, when India tortured and incarcerated thousands of Kashmiri children after revoking Article 370 and Article 35A of the Indian constitution, which guaranteed the semi-autonomous status of the Muslim-majority state. It also imposed an indefinite civilian curfew and telecommunications and internet blockade which lasted for months. High-speed internet services still remain curtailed.

Yet in the controversy over quarantine, mobile screens buzzed with news from students and their relatives who voiced their concerns on various social media platforms. Going public has become a necessary way to pressure local officials, who would otherwise almost always turn a blind to the daily tribulations.

In one such post, a girl reported state security taking a group of students to a camp operated Border Security Force – the border guard organisation of India – where the students were allegedly beaten up by the police for refusing to go inside.

“Who takes students especially girls there?” she asked on Twitter, alluding to past instances when Indian soldiers were charged with rape allegations and other hostile misconduct against Kashmiri women. The students were later shifted to a nearby hotel.

In another incident, a relative of a female medical student who had returned from Bangladesh criticised the administration for carrying students to a makeshift quarantine center in a military van instead of an ambulance. “My sister-in-law was in there and she begged me to drive by its side,” he wrote on Twitter.

Such exposés kept popping up.


Recently, a news report revealed an incident in which a teenage girl was allegedly attacked by a police constable in a quarantine facility in Kashmir’s Chadoora district. Prior to that, a state official was seen threatening a female student for protesting the uncleanliness of quarantine centres.

Others allege that police officials would visit quarantine centres and angrily bang on the doors in the Rajbagh area of Srinagar, annoyed at the repeated complaints by students about the unhealthy conditions they were forced to stay in.

J&K police have also started intimidating doctors and other health workers and stopping them from visiting hospitals to treat Covid-19 and other ailing patients. A doctor was even detained for resisting aggressive police officials. “Let your patients and the hospital go to hell,” were the words used by a senior police officer to a doctor when he had begged to be able to get to his hospital where he was on call.

While the world fights a deadly pandemic, Kashmir fears for the worst as India’s military occupation persists in its violence against the local population.



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

Clr_james_at_desk-
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.