Opel destroys another 1,000 jobs in Germany

Ludwig Weller

WSWS.ORG

Although automaker Opel is once again posting hefty profits under the Stellantis corporate umbrella, management is cutting another 1,000 jobs at its German sites over the coming months.

Opel’s main plant in Rüsselsheim will be the hardest hit. Employees working at the development centre (ITEZ) and in administration in particular are being asked to leave “voluntarily.” But jobs are also to be cut “in a socially responsible manner” at the Eisenach plant, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last weekend, and at the Kaiserslautern plant.

The ITEZ has been under fire since PSA (Peugeot/Citroën) acquired Opel in 2017. For corporate CEO Carlos Tavares, the engineers once considered “the heart” of Opel are now too expensive. He wants to move development to outside companies.

The merger of PSA with Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA) to form Stellantis, announced in 2019 and completed in early 2021, has further accelerated job cuts. Now, Opel’s current sales department in Rüsselsheim is also to be merged into a joint Stellantis sales organization as early as October 1. At the same time, hundreds of permanent staff have been replaced by temporary workers on the Rüsselsheim production lines.

Management justifies its plan by citing the consequences of the crisis, which the ruling class and the federal government have created. An Opel company spokesman declared, “Against the backdrop of the rapid transformation of the industry, the pandemic, the geopolitical situation, brittle supply chains and massive increases in energy and raw material prices.” The goal, he said, was to “strengthen the company’s competitiveness in the long term.”

In other words, workers who have often worn themselves out producing cars over decades are now to suffer the consequences of Germany’s involvement in the Ukraine war and the NATO-led economic boycott against Russia.

This under conditions where hundreds of thousands have already paid with their lives and health for the government’s refusal to contain the coronavirus pandemic, pursuing herd immunity policies allowing the virus to run wild, in the interests of the economic and financial elites. Now they are expected to voluntarily sacrifice their jobs as well.

What is conspicuous about the latest bad news is not only the lack of interest from the media and establishment politicians, but, most significantly, the silence of the IG Metall trade union. There is a simple reason for this. The latest job cuts simply continue the policy of slash and burn which company management has long agreed with IG Metall and the Opel works council representatives.

When the takeover of Opel by PSA was engineered in 2017, IG Metall and its works council representatives agreed to the cutting thousands of jobs. At the time, around 19,000 people still worked at Opel. At one time, 7,000 employees worked at the ITEZ alone; now there are fewer than 3,000.

At the end of 2019—PSA had just announced the merger with FCA to form Stellantis—the IG Metall and works council gave the green light to cut at least another 4,000 jobs in a position paper. As always, without any approval from the workforce, it agreed to cut jobs in stages. By the end of 2021, a further 2,100 jobs would be eliminated via so-called voluntary programs, i.e., partial retirement, early retirement, or severance payments. The works council pushed through these cuts with a promise from the corporate management it would forego compulsory redundancies until the end of 2025.

But that is not all: the position paper gave the company two further options. Stellantis can cut another 1,000 jobs in 2022 and 2023 at will. All the corporation must do is promise to gradually extend job protection until 2029.

The bare figures show just how much this alleged protection against dismissal is worth. Within six years, i.e., since the takeover by PSA until the end of 2023, 11,000 jobs will be eliminated without replacement. Given the 19,000 employees before the takeover, this is a reduction of around 60 percent.

Hesse news site VRM aptly noted: “Anyone who made this calculation a few years ago was accused by both the company and the unions of spreading horror scenarios. As of today, Opel is not far from such scenarios.”

The World Socialist Web Site early on foretold this development. The giant Stellantis corporation, which today employs about 410,000 workers and operates plants on almost every continent, is now the world’s third-largest car company. The World Socialist Web Sitewroteat the time of the January 2021 merger:

“The merger of FCA and PSA has been driven by the ferocious struggle among the auto giants to dominate both new technologies, including electric and autonomous vehicles, and markets. The tie-up will itself push other companies to seek out further consolidation and cost savings. The major banks and investors have exerted relentless pressure on automakers in recent years to accelerate cuts and restructuring plans, with the aim of squeezing out every drop of profits possible from the working class.”

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is notorious as a restructurer and cost-cutter, responsible for destroying thousands of jobs at PSA’s European operations in France, Germany, and Britain. Now he is waging similar attacks around the world so Stellantis can continue to pay high dividends to its shareholders and compete against its rivals in the rapidly growing electric vehicle market.

Without IG Metall and its pro-corporate works council representatives, Opel/Stellantis could not make the job cuts happen. With the union’s help, it has already succeeded in closing Opel plants in Antwerp and Bochum, and cutting thousands of jobs at its remaining sites in Rüsselsheim, Kaiserslautern, and Eisenach. The works councils have suppressed any opposition or resistance by workers. In the process, they and IG Metall have deliberately fomented nationalism and plant-vs-plant politics in order to divide workers and play them off against each other.

It is time to oppose this corporate and union conspiracy and take up the fight to defend all jobs. To do this, auto workers at Opel must take matters into their own hands and network with their colleagues at other Stellantis sites in Europe and around the world.

Workers worldwide face the same problems and are confronted with the same adversaries: unions which, together with governments and corporations, want to place the burden of the capitalist crisis on their backs. Working people are being asked to pay for the war that NATO is waging against Russia in Ukraine with energy costs that are skyrocketing because of sanctions against Russia, alongside raging inflation.

Just last week, workers at the Stellantis plant in Hordain in northern France walked off the job independently of the CGT union there against the sharply deteriorating economic conditions. The wildcat strike lasted for three days before the CGT was able to force workers back to the assembly lines.

Opel workers in Germany need to build rank-and-file action committees to fight the nationalist and pro-corporate policies of the IG Metall and its works council representatives and join forces with their brothers and sisters in France, Italy, the US, Mexico, Europe, and the rest of the world.

They can take their cue from the example set by autoworkers, educators, rail workers and other sections of the working class in the US and internationally, that are openly revolting against the corporations and their junior partners in the trade unions. These workers have formed rank-and-file committees independent of the corrupt unions to mobilize the world’s most powerful force, the working class, at the local, national, and global levels.

The highest expression of this movement is the campaign of US auto worker Will Lehman, who is currently running against the bureaucrats of the United Auto Workers in the union’s first-ever direct election for president. His campaign is aimed at “building a mass movement among rank-and-file workers to break the dictatorship of the UAW apparatus and return power to the workers.”

Building independent rank-and-file action committees is the only way to break free from the grip of the union bureaucrats, defend jobs and wages, and fight against the drive to war. Stellantis workers in Europe must form their own action committees, following the example of their brothers and sisters at Sterling Heights Assembly in the US, Ford workers in Saarlouis, Germany, who are fighting the closure of their plant, and US railroad workers.

Two-thirds of pilots in India admit to falling asleep at the controls

Daily Telegraph UK
By Joe Wallen
23 Sep, 2022 


Pilots said overwork and being expected to fly back-to-back morning flights, which meant waking up as early as 2 am, was the leading cause of falling asleep in the cockpit. Photo / 123RF

Two-thirds of pilots in India have admitted falling asleep in the cockpit, prompting serious concerns about safety as the country struggles to recruit enough captains.

Some 66 per cent of pilots questioned said they had fallen asleep while at the controls of the plane without alerting a fellow staff member, according to a study conducted on 542 regional, domestic and international pilots by the Safety Matters Foundation.

India, home to 1.38 billion people, is the world's fastest-growing aviation market.

Airlines require up to 1,500 new pilots annually but only 200 to 300 are qualifying, resulting in huge shortages of trained pilots.

India is also recovering from the severe disruptions to the aviation industry caused by the pandemic.

Pilots said overwork and being expected to fly back-to-back morning flights, which meant waking up as early as 2 am, was the leading cause of falling asleep in the cockpit.

Nearly a third of respondents admitted to having a close call while flying which could have led to an incident, which they attributed to extreme tiredness.

Fatigue is one of the main reasons attributed to plane accidents. There are hundreds of flights each week between India and the United Kingdom, where some 1.5 million British Indians live.

"Circadian misalignment can make you feel drained and can have serious health consequences. Repeated flight duty in this period [early morning] will not only affect sleep quality but over 10-12 hours duty will lead to poor cognition thereby affecting flight safety," said Captain Amit Singh, a pilot and the founder of the Safety Matters Foundation.

Aviation accidents are rare, but when they have occurred, figures show that 80 per cent are a result of human error, with pilot fatigue accounting for 15-20 per cent of human error in fatal accidents.

Fatigue leads to slower reaction times and impaired concentration and decision making.

In 2010, an Air India Express flight from Dubai to the southern Indian city of Mangalore crashed on landing, killing 158 people. It was later discovered the pilot had been asleep for one hour and 40 minutes of the two hour flight.

Growing aircraft safety concerns in India

There are growing aircraft safety concerns in India, with eight aviation accidents every year now on average. The figure is up from the four accidents in 2021 and two in 2020, according to data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The last major crash was in 2020 when 21 people died when an Air India Express flight skidded off the runway in heavy monsoon rain in the southern Indian city of Calicut.

In addition to overworked pilots, and unpredictable weather, especially during the summer monsoon season, aircraft maintenance is also sporadic.

In one infamous incident in December, a baggage handler in Mumbai fell asleep in the hold of an IndiGo plane while loading luggage and woke up in Abu Dhabi.

India's air safety watchdog has extended restrictions on SpiceJet, India's second-largest carrier, over safety lapses, until October 29.

The airline has been restricted to 50 per cent of scheduled departures since July after eight in-air technical malfunctions in 16 days in June.

Energy-related issues continue to dominate agendas of European countries

Spanish consumers seeing monthly electricity bills increase, Belgium closes nuclear reactor in Doel, among other measures in Europe

Anadolu Agency Staff |24.09.2022

ANKARA

Energy-related issues continue to dominate the agenda of European countries, as they could face major challenges in supplying affordable energy to households and industries this winter.

New plans were put forward Friday in response to the deepening crisis.

Spain

Despite major interventions in Spain’s electricity markets, including a cap on the price of gas, consumers are seeing their monthly electricity bills increase faster than many of their European peers.

In August, average electricity bills were up 60.6% compared to last year, according to Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) data from Eurostat.

In Germany, by contrast, which has been heavily reliant on Russian gas, average electricity bills climbed just 16.6% in the same period.

France, which has suffered prolonged shutdowns of its nuclear reactors due to a lack of water for cooling and maintenance issues, has also protected consumers from dramatic electricity bill increases. There, prices only rose 7.7%.

Across the EU, there are dramatic differences in how much bills have risen in the last 12 months, with the average annual increase sitting at 35.7%.

Belgium

The Doel 3 reactor that has been in operation for 40 years will be shut down Friday in compliance with a law on a nuclear phase-out.

Despite the energy crisis in Europe, the nuclear reactor in Doel, north of the port city of Antwerp, will close Friday.

This is the first time that a nuclear reactor will be permanently shut down in Belgium.

The Doel 3 reactor, one of four reactors of the Doel Nuclear Power Plant, will disconnect from the grid at 21.15 local time due to the nuclear phase-out law enforced by past governments.

The 1,006 megawatt-hours capacitated reactor was built in 1978 and was grid connected in 1982.


Switzerland

Swiss retail giants Migros and Coop have decided to reduce thermostat and light use in shops due to the looming energy crisis, according to media reports on Friday.

At Migros, the temperature will be reduced to 19 degrees Celsius (66 F), news portal Nau.ch reported.

Coop will also reduce the temperature in stores and offices by 2 degrees, it added.

Customers will not only have to prepare for cooler temperatures but less lighting, according to the report.

Both wholesalers confirmed they will do without Christmas lights this year, to save energy.

Greece

Main opposition SYRIZA spokesman, Nasos Iliopoulos, blamed the ruling New Democracy government of "making a deliberate political choice to plunder society in the energy sector."

Iliopoulos, who gave an interview Friday to the left-wing affiliated Sto Kokkino 105.5 FM radio station, accused the government of giving subsidies to the people from money taken from them.

"The money for the subsidies that the government is giving to keep down prices is taken from society, at a time when there are increased tax revenues, which from VAT alone amount to 2.5 billion, and inflation is running at 11-12%, when the ruling New Democracy party refuses to reduce the excise tax on fuel or the VAT on basic foodstuffs,” he said.

Juul Sues FDA for Documents Said to Justify E-Cigarette Ban

Reuters Sep 23, 2022

JUUL Labs Inc. Virginia tobacco and menthol flavored vaping e-cigarette products are displayed in a convenience store in El Segundo, Calif., on June 23, 2022. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Juul Labs has sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the agency’s refusal to disclose documents supporting its order banning the company, which has been blamed for fueling a teenage vaping crisis, from selling e-cigarettes on the U.S. market.

In a complaint filed on Tuesday with a federal court in Washington, D.C., Juul accused the FDA of invoking the “widely abused” deliberative process privilege to improperly withhold scientific materials that are “central” to understanding the basis for the June 23 sales ban.

Juul said the materials would show whether the FDA conducted a legally required balancing of the public health benefits and risks of its products, including claims they help smokers quit cigarettes, and whether the agency’s reasoning was scientifically sound.

“The public deserves a complete picture of the scientific facts behind one of the agency’s most controversial and closely scrutinized decisions in recent years,” Juul said.

An FDA spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the agency does not discuss pending litigation.

Juul accused the FDA of violating the federal Freedom of Information Act by withholding a majority of the “scientific disciplinary reviews” underlying the sales ban.

It said it filed an administrative appeal through the agency, but the FDA missed a Sept. 13 deadline to resolve it.

A federal appeals court temporarily stayed the sales ban on June 24.

The FDA then decided on July 5 to let Juul keep selling its products for the time being, saying “scientific issues” unique to the company warranted further review.

On Sept. 6, Juul agreed to pay $438.5 million to settle claims by 34 U.S. states and territories over its marketing and sales practices, including that it improperly courted teenage buyers.

Marlboro cigarette maker Altria Group Inc paid $12.8 billion in 2018 for a 35 percent stake in Juul. Altria valued that stake at $450 million as of June 30.

The case is Juul Labs Inc. v Food & Drug Administration, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, No. 22—02853.

By Jonathan Stempel

MURDER MOST FOUL

Elijah McClain amended autopsy: Black man died due to sedative and restraint

AP

A protester carries an image of Elijah McClain during a rally in Aurora, in 2020. A Colorado judge last week responded to a request to release an amended autopsy report of McClain's death. Photo / AP

A Black man died after a police encounter in a Denver suburb in 2019 because he was injected with a powerful sedative after being forcibly restrained, according to an amended autopsy report.

Despite the finding, the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, was still listed as undetermined, not a homicide, the report publicly released on Friday shows.

McClain was put in a neck hold and injected with ketamine after being stopped by police in Aurora for "being suspicious." He was unarmed.

The original autopsy report that was written soon after his death in August 2019 did not reach a conclusion about how he died or what type of death his was - eg, if it was natural, accidental or a homicide.

That was a major reason why prosecutors initially decided not to pursue charges.

Demonstrators move along Interstate 225 after stopping traffic during a rally and march over the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain, in 2020, in Aurora. Photo / A

But a state grand jury last year indicted three officers and two paramedics on manslaughter and reckless homicide charges in McClain's death after the case drew renewed attention following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

It became a rallying cry during the national reckoning over racism and police brutality.

The five accused have not yet entered pleas and their lawyers have not commented publicly on the charges.

In the updated report, completed in July 2021, Dr Stephen Cina, a pathologist, concluded that the ketamine dosage given to McClain was higher than recommended for someone his size.

"(It) was too much for this individual and it resulted in an overdose, even though his blood ketamine level was consistent with a 'therapeutic' blood concentration."

Cina said he could not rule out that changes in McClain's blood chemistry, such as an increase in lactic acid due to his exertion while being restrained by police, contributed to his death.

However, he concluded there was no evidence that injuries inflicted by police caused McClain's death.

"I believe that Mr McClain would most likely be alive but for the administration of ketamine," said Cina, who noted that body camera footage shows McClain becoming "extremely sedated" within a few minutes of being given the drug.

Cina acknowledged that other reasonable pathologists with different experience and training may have labeled such a death, while in police custody, as a homicide or accident, but that he believes the appropriate classification is undetermined.

Qusair Mohamedbhai, attorney for McClain's mother, Sheneen McClain, declined a request for comment.

Dr Carl Wigren, a forensic pathologist in Washington state, questioned the report's focus on ketamine.

Wigren said all the available evidence — including a highly critical independent review of McClain's death commissioned by Aurora last year — point to McClain dying as a result of compressional asphyxia, a type of suffocation, from officers putting pressure on his body while restraining him.

Wigren was struck by one passage in the city's review citing the ambulance company's report that its crew found McClain lying on the ground on his stomach, his arms handcuffed behind his back, his torso and legs held down, with at least three officers on top of him.

A makeshift memorial stands at a site across the street from where Elijah McClain

 was stopped by police officers while walking home. Photo / A

That scene was not captured on body camera footage, the report said, but much of what happened between police was not visually recorded as the officers' cameras came off soon after McClain was approached.

The cameras did continue to record audio where they fell and captured people talking.

Just because McClain, who said he couldn't breathe, could be heard making some statements on the footage, does not mean he was able to fully breathe, Wigren said.

Ketamine, which slows breathing, could have just exacerbated McClain's condition, but Wigren does not think it caused his death.

However, another pathologist, Dr Deborah G Johnson of Colorado, said McClain's quick reaction to ketamine suggests that it was a cause of McClain's death.

However, she said its use cannot be separated from the impact that the police restraint may have had.

McClain may have had trouble breathing because of the restraint and having less oxygen in his system would make the sedative take effect more quickly, she said.

Both thought the death could have been labeled as a homicide — a death caused by the actions of other people — which they pointed out is a separate judgment from deciding whether someone should be prosecuted with a crime for causing it.

McClain got an overdose of ketamine, Johnson said, noting that the paramedics were working at night when it is hard to judge someone's weight.

"Was that a mistake to send someone to prison for? I don't think so," she said.

The updated autopsy was released Friday under a court order in a lawsuit brought by Colorado Public Radio, joined by other media organisations including The Associated Press.

Colorado Public Radio sued the coroner to release the report after learning it had been updated, arguing that it should be made available under the state's public records law.

Coroner Monica Broncucia-Jordan had said she could not release it because it contained confidential grand jury information and that releasing it would violate the oath she made not to share it when she obtained it last year.

But Adams County District Judge Kyle Seedorf ordered the coroner to release the updated report, and Denver judge Christopher Baumann, who oversees state grand jury proceedings, ruled on Thursday that grand jury information did not have be redacted from the updated report.

Cina noted that the report was updated based on extensive body camera footage, witness statements and records that he did not have at the time of the original autopsy report, which were not made available to the coroner's office at all or in their entirety before.

Last year, Cina and Broncucia-Jordan received some material that was made available to the grand jury in 2021, according to court documents, but they did not say what exactly that material was.

McClain's death fueled renewed scrutiny about the use of ketamine and led Colorado's health department to issue a new rule limiting when emergency workers can use it.

Last year, the city of Aurora agreed to pay $15 million to settle a lawsuit brought by McClain's parents.

The lawsuit alleged the force officers used against McClain and his struggle to survive it dramatically increased the amount of lactic acid in his system, leading to his death, possibly along with the large dose of ketamine he was given.

The outside investigation commissioned by the city faulted the police probe into McClain's arrest for not pressing for answers about how officers treated him.

It found there was no evidence justifying officers' decision to stop McClain, who had been reported as suspicious because he was wearing a ski mask as he walked down the street waving his hands.

He was not accused of breaking any law.

Police reform activist Candice Bailey had mixed emotions about seeing the amended autopsy.

"I do believe that it does get us a step closer to anything that is a semblance of justice," said Bailey, an activist in the city of Aurora who has led demonstrations over the death of McClain.

But Bailey added that she is "extremely saddened that there is still a controversy around whether or not the EMTs and officers should be held responsible for what they did, and as to whether or not this was actually murder".

Read More

• Death of Elijah McClain: Officers, medics indicted ...
• Elijah McClain death brings new scrutiny on ketamine ...
• US police officer's camera stops before shooting death ...

As Ukraine worries UN, some leaders rue what's pushed aside


By Jennifer Peltz | AP
September 24, 2022

Foreign Minister of South Africa Naledi Pandor addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

UNITED NATIONS — In speech after speech, world leaders dwelled on the topic consuming this year’s U.N. General Assembly meeting: Russia’s war in Ukraine.

A few, like Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, prodded the world not to forget everything else.

He, too, was quick to bring up the biggest military confrontation in Europe since World War II. But he wasn’t there to discuss the conflict itself, nor its disruption of food, fuel and fertilizer markets.

“The ongoing war in Ukraine is making it more difficult,” Buhari lamented, “to tackle the perennial issues that feature each year in the deliberations of this assembly.”

He went on to name a few: inequality, nuclear disarmament, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the more than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar who have been living in limbo for years in Bangladesh.

In an environment where words are parsed, confrontations are calibrated and worry is acute that the war and its wider effects could worsen, no one dismissed the importance of the conflict. But comments such as Buhari’s quietly spoke to a certain unease, sometimes bordering on frustration, about the international community’s absorption in Ukraine.

Those murmurs are audible enough that the United States’ U.N. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, made a point of previewing Washington’s plans to address climate change, food insecurity, health and other issues during the diplomatic community’s premier annual gathering.

“Other countries have expressed a concern that as we focus on Ukraine, we are not paying attention to what is happening in other crises around the world,” she said, vowing that it wasn’t so. Still, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken complained at a Security Council meeting days later that Russia’s invasion is distracting the U.N. from working on other important matters.

In many years at the assembly, there’s a hot spot or news development that takes up a lot of diplomatic oxygen. As former U.N. official Jan Egeland puts it, “the world manages to focus on one crisis at a time.”

“But I cannot, in these many years as a humanitarian worker or a diplomat, remember any time when the focus was so strongly on one conflict only while the world was falling apart elsewhere,” Egeland, now secretary-general of an international aid group called the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a phone interview.

Certainly, no one was surprised by the attention devoted to a conflict with Cold War echoes, oblique nuclear threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin, shelling that has endangered the continent’s largest atomic power plant, and far-reaching economic effects. The urgency only intensified during the weeklong meeting as Russia mobilized some of its military reserves.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland — on Ukraine’s doorstep — stressed in his speech that “we mustn’t show any ‘war fatigue’” regarding the conflict. But he also noted that a recent trip to Africa left him pondering how the West has treated other conflicts.

“Were we equally resolute during the tragedies of Syria, Libya, Yemen?” he asked himself, and the assembly. And didn’t the West return to “business as usual” after wars in Congo and the Horn of Africa?

“While condemning the invasion of Ukraine,” Duda added, “do we give equal weight to fighting mercenaries who seek to destabilize the Sahel and threaten many other states in Africa?”

He isn’t the only one asking.

Over seven months of war, there have been pointed observations from some quarters about how quickly and extensively wealthy and powerful nations mobilized money, military aid, General Assembly votes to support Ukraine and offer refuge to its residents, compared to the global response to some other conflicts.

South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor last month told reporters – and the visiting Blinken — that while the war is awful, “we should be equally concerned at what is happening to the people of Palestine as we are with what is happening to the people of Ukraine.”

At the General Assembly, she added that, from South Africa’s vantage point, “our greatest global challenges are poverty, inequality, joblessness and a feeling of being entirely ignored and excluded.”

Tuvalu’s prime minister, Kausea Natano, said in an interview on the assembly’s sidelines that the war shouldn’t “be an excuse” for countries to ignore their financial commitments to a top priority for his island nation: fighting climate change. Part of Bolivian President Luis Arce’s speech compared the untold billions of dollars spent on fighting in Ukraine in a matter of months to the $11 billion committed to the U.N.-sponsored Green Climate Fund over more than a decade.

To be sure, most leaders made time for issues beyond Ukraine in their allotted, if not always enforced, 15 minutes at the mic. And some mentioned the war only in passing, or not at all.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro devoted his time to lambasting capitalism, consumerism and the U.S.-led war on drugs, particularly its focus on coca plant eradication. Krygyz President Sadyr Zhaparov, whose country has close ties to Russia, homed in on his homeland’s border dispute with Tajikistan. Jordan’s King Abdullah II briefly mentioned the war’s effects on food supplies, then moved on to sustainable economic growth, Syrian refugees and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ukraine is undeniably a dominant concern for the European Union. But foreign policy chief Josep Borrell insisted the bloc hasn’t lost sight of other problems.

“It’s not a question of choosing between Ukraine and the others. We can do all at the same time,” he said on the eve of the assembly.

Yet diplomatic attention and time are precious, sought-after resources. So, too, the will and money to help.

U.N. humanitarian office figures show that governments and private organizations have put up about $3.7 billion to aid Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees this year. About $2 billion has been raised for war-torn Yemen, where the U.N. says over 17 million people are struggling with acute hunger.

And those are big campaigns. Just $428 million has been raised for Myanmar and for the Rohingya in Bangladesh.

Egeland’s organization helps uprooted people around the world, including in Ukraine. But he feels an “urgent need to get attention to absolute freefalls elsewhere.”

“It didn’t get better in Congo or in Yemen or in Myanmar or in Venezuela because it got so much worse in Europe, in and around Ukraine,” Egeland said. “We need to fight for those who are starving in the shadows of this horrific war in Ukraine.”


___


Associated Press writers Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal, and Aya Batrawy and Pia Sarkar at the United Nations contributed to this report.


___


For more AP coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, visit https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly.

Bailouts Won’t Save Sri Lanka. Ending Dynastic Politics Might.

For far too long Sri Lanka has been a stage with the Rajapaksas as the only meaningful actors. A democratic renewal may be all that can save the country in the long run.

By Debrah Gomes and Vineeth Krishnan
September 20, 2022

In this Aug. 11, 2019, file photo, former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, left, and former Defense Secretary and his brother Gotabaya Rajapaksa wave to supporters during a party convention held to announce the presidential candidacy in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Credit: AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena


Sri Lanka is in crisis: a battered economy, sovereign default, food and fuel shortages, and now renewed international pressure on how Colombo mismanaged the political settlement of the ethnic conflict with the Tamils.

Indeed, ahead of the ongoing session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the organization released a report that went as far as to claim that Sri Lanka’s economic travails are in part a consequence of the “embedded impunity for past and present human rights abuses, economic crimes, and corruption.” The U.N. report has received moderate validation from some of Sri Lanka’s most significant potential allies, including India, which has voiced concerns over the lack of “measurable progress” with respect to addressing the ethnic problem.

Drawing a direct correlation between such “impunity” and the current economic crisis may admittedly be a bit of a stretch. However, what the report somewhat accidentally sheds light on is the political consequences of winning a civil war, particularly with respect to the level of adulation and freedom afforded to the perceived “heroes” of such a struggle – in this case, the country’s prominent Rajapaksa family.

The protracted war against certain Tamil groups, most prominently the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), was one of the most significant challenges Sri Lanka has had to endure since its independence. It had been expected that following the declaration of victory against the LTTE in 2009, the country would return to being a leading figure in the Global South with respect to its advocacy of free-market liberalization.

During the 1970s, Sri Lanka started attracting foreign investors in droves, primarily due to its willingness to buck the trend in much of the developing world and initiate liberalized trade reforms. The announcement of economic reform policies and tax benefits in 1977 paved the way for foreign direct investment (FDI) to flow into the country, which spent significantly over the next decade in improving basic infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities for export-oriented products. However, before such policies could truly start bearing fruit, a succession of internal armed conflicts from 1983 onward led to foreign investors fleeing Sri Lanka, with some – like the American giants Motorola and Harris Corporation – having never returned to the island state.

While Sri Lanka initiated a second wave of trade reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it would not be a stretch to suggest that the state never truly recovered the sheen of its brief economic success in the late 1970s. With successive governments embroiled in tackling the civil war, Sri Lanka’s economy devolved into an export hub for certain natural resources such as rubber and coconuts, and low-level value-added products such as Ceylon Tea. There was also a growing demand in the textile sector, which quickly emerged as one of the largest sources of foreign exchange for the Sri Lankan economy. Since the end of the civil war, tourism has also picked up as a major source of revenue for the state, while the global fixation on the Blue Economy also augured well for the island nation and its 22 million-strong population.

It is to be expected that a state would suffer in terms of setting up a strong, resilient economy while it is engaged in fighting a credible security threat within its borders. While economic and military aid flows into Sri Lanka helped keep it afloat for much of this period, the onus on any state in a post-war recovery stage is to address any structural shortcomings that may have become entrenched during the long years spent focusing primarily on security and territorial integrity. However, since the second wave of trade policies petered out by the end of the 1990s, much of the economic measures initiated in the last two decades have been rather piecemeal and reeked of short-termism. The lack of adequate reforms has resulted in the definite mishandling of Sri Lanka’s economy.

The Destiny of a Dynasty

For over 20 years, the Rajapaksa family dynasty has controlled Sri Lankan politics. 

They have been accused of nepotism, corruption, and poor administration. Mahinda Rajapaksa served two terms as president of Sri Lanka, from 2005 to 2015, while his brother Gotabaya was elected president in 2019. While Mahinda had been active in political circles since the 1970s, Gotabaya retired from the Sri Lankan Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1991, having seen action during the First Eelam War. When Mahinda entered office as president in 2005, he named his brother secretary to the Ministry of Defense and Urban Development, a post he held until 2015.

With the defense portfolio under Mahinda and with his brother serving as the secretary, the Rajapaksa brothers held sway over Sri Lanka’s National Security Council during this period and were effectively credited with bringing an end to the decades-long armed conflict with the Tamil groups. It would not be remiss to state that apart from belts in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, the Rajapaksa brothers were seen as the heroes who brought the LTTE to heel, even if this required brutal strength to achieve. Mahinda’s re-election in 2010 with nearly 58 percent of the popular vote, a year after the end of the war, is testament to this notion.

During his years in power, Mahinda was criticized for placing dozens of relatives – including Gotabaya – in government positions. Upon becoming president in 2019, Gotabaya effectively returned the favor, appointing Mahinda as prime minister. Furthermore, Gotabaya also continued the trend of delegating important positions to his wider family.

Dynastic politics is nothing new in South Asia, let alone Sri Lanka. Still, it can be argued that the Rajapaksas have managed to take this to a whole new level, all the while winning elections (except for Mahinda’s second re-election campaign of 2015) with the utmost ease. If they enjoyed public support for so long, then where did things go wrong? Arguably, it is exactly the sort of unprecedented public approval that the Rajapaksas once enjoyed that has landed the country in such trouble.

As a nation, Sri Lanka has lurched from crisis to crisis during the years of the Rajapaksa dynasty. For Mahinda, on assuming power in 2005, just as important as ending the civil war was the reconstruction efforts in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. For Gotabaya, one of the main catalysts for his appointment as president in November 2019 was the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks earlier that year. Then, immediately after he entered office, Sri Lanka (and the world) was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the intervening years, the Rajapaksas, particularly Mahinda, cultivated an image of flamboyant leaders, able to negotiate from a position of strength and keep both China and India on their toes. Cognizant of China’s expanding interests in the Indian Ocean and the potential threat India foresaw from this, Sri Lanka enjoyed a period where bigger powers were falling over themselves to gain favor in Colombo. Major infrastructure projects were signed off on, with Sri Lanka borrowing from all manner of lenders – from sovereign states to private creditors – to finance ambitious ventures like the Hambantota port, Colombo Port City, Lotus Tower, and Mattala International Airport, to name but a few.

All the while both Mahinda and Gotabaya ensured that key posts related to such projects were held by those close to them. This is perhaps what the UNHRC report alleging “economic crimes and corruption” is most specifically referring to. Some of the Rajapaksa brothers’ extended family who held key posts during 2005-2015 and 2019-2022 are listed below (the periods of service are provided where available):

Chamal Rajapaksa, eldest brother of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Speaker of Parliament (2010-15), Minister of Irrigation and Water Management (2007-2010).

Basil Rajapaksa, younger brother of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Minister of Finance (2021-22), Minister of Economic Development (2010-15).

Namal Rajapaksa, son of Mahinda: Minister of Youth and Sports (2020-22)

.
Yoshitha Rajapaksa, son of Mahinda: Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff.

Nirupama Rajapaksa, niece of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Deputy Minister of Water Supply and Drainage (2010-2015).

Chandra Rajapaksa, younger brother of Mahinda, elder to Gotabaya: Private Secretary to the Minister of Finance, Private Secretary to the Minister of Ports and Highways.

Shashindra Rajapaksa, son of Chamal: Chief Minister of Uva Province (2009-2015), Private Secretary to the President.

Shamindra Rajapaksa, son of Chamal: Director Sri Lankan Airlines (2010-2014), Director of Sri Lanka Telecom (2010-2014).

Chaminda Rajapaksa, son of Chandra: Presidential Adviser, Coordinator for Hambantota.

Lalith Chandradasa, husband of Preethi Rajapaksa, younger sister of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Chairman of Sri Lanka Ports Authority, Chairman of National Aquaculture Development Authority, Chairman of Ceylon Fisheries Harbors Corporation, Member of Securities & Exchange Commission.

Anoma Laphir, niece of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Coordinating Secretary to the President.
Jaliya Wickramasuriya, nephew of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Ambassador to the U.S. (2008-2014).

Prasanna Wickramasuriya, nephew of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Chairman of Airport and Aviation Services Limited.

Udayanga Weeratunga, cousin of Mahinda and Gotabaya: Ambassador to Russia.
Srimal Wickramasinghe, brother-in-law of Mahinda: Deputy Chief of Mission and Minister at Embassy in Vienna.

Nishantha Wickramasinghe, brother-in-law of Mahinda: Chairman of Sri Lankan Airlines, Chairman of Mihin Lanka.

All said, the Rajapaksa brothers are said to have placed more than 40 relatives in influential positions during their respective tenures as president. They got away with it largely because of the instrumental role the two brothers were seen to have played in ending the 26-year long civil war. The Rajapaksas ensured that the key finance portfolio was kept within the family, with Mahinda in charge during 2005-2015 and again from November 2019 to July 2021 under Gotabaya’s presidency, before being replaced as minister by their brother Basil (who remained in the post until April of this year).

Similarly, plum posts in the ministries of Economic Development, Ports and Highways, and Irrigation and Water Management, as well as in major state-run firms like Sri Lankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Telecom, Sri Lanka Ports Authority, and Airport and Aviation Service Limited, always had a Rajapaksa at or near the helm. Even key foreign postings such as the ambassadorships to the United States and Russia were utilized to satiate the wider family’s ambitions and ensure the growth of the dynasty.

Alongside the ill-advised moves by the Gotabaya presidency to slash taxes at a record rate and to implement overnight a practice of organic farming by banning imports of chemical fertilizers, one of the major root causes of Sri Lanka’s current peril has to be the widespread nepotism of the Rajapaksa family. With each new ambitious proposal that was made and with each new ministry or state-run organization helmed by a near-relative, the sovereign debt of Sri Lanka has increased, while the Rajapaksa family coffers kept overflowing. Reports in 2015 suggested that during the two terms of Mahinda’s presidency, over $18 billion was siphoned off by the family. Indeed, the Rajapaksas are by some estimates responsible for over 78 percent of Sri Lanka’s current debt.

What Now?

Whether or not international creditors agree to restructure Sri Lanka’s debt, and whether or not the International Monetary Fund (IMF) follows through on the preliminary agreement to provide a $2.9 billion loan to the state, nothing will change on the ground until the Sri Lankan political landscape takes a turn for the better. The warm welcome that Gotabaya received from political aides on his return to Sri Lanka (having fled seven weeks before in the face of citizen protests) does not leave much room for optimism. It is not loans, aid, or debt restructuring that the island-nation needs the most. A return to grassroots democracy with the coming through of a new crop of leaders is the need of the hour in Sri Lanka.

To that extent, the call by India at the UNHRC for tangible progress toward the implementation of provincial elections as per the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution is a step in the right direction. For far too long all of Sri Lanka has been a stage with the Rajapaksas as the only meaningful actors.

The article expresses the authors’ views alone and does not reflect the opinions and beliefs of any institution to which they belong.

Desmond Tutu's daughter 'banned' from Church of England funeral because of marriage to woman

Daily Telegraph UK
By Gareth Davies
23 Sep, 2022 


Desmond Tutu. Photo / AP

The daughter of the late Desmond Tutu has reportedly been prohibited from leading her godfather's funeral by the Church of England because she is married to a woman.

Mpho Tutu van Furth, who is a practising Anglican priest in the US, had been asked to officiate the funeral of the late Martin Kenyon in Shropshire.

In a statement carried by the BBC, the Diocese of Hereford said: "Advice was given in line with the House of Bishops' current guidance on same-sex marriage."

Tutu van Furth reportedly told the broadcaster the decision "seemed really churlish and hurtful", and the diocese described it as "a difficult situation".

The Church of England does not allow same-sex marriage in its clergy, but The Episcopal Church in the US - of which Tutu van Furth is a part - does.

She had her licence to officiate as a priest rescinded in South Africa when she revealed her sexuality and married Marceline van Furth, a Dutch academic, in 2015.

When the Kenyon family discovered Tutu van Furth had been barred, they moved the service from St Michael and All Angels in Wentnor, just south of Shrewsbury near the England-Wales border.

The funeral was moved to a marquee in a neighbouring vicarage so the goddaughter could officiate.

Tutu van Furth told the BBC: "It's incredibly sad. It feels like a bureaucratic response with maybe a lack of compassion.

"It seemed really churlish and hurtful. But as sad as that was, there was the joy of having a celebration of a person who could throw open the door to people who are sometimes excluded."

Desmond Tutu, who died in December 2021, won the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1980s for his work tackling apartheid in South Africa.

He also championed gay rights and campaigned for same-sex marriage.

In 2013, he said: "I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place.

"I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this ... I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level."

FARC dissidents in Colombia accept cease-fire proposed by government

President Gustavo Petro announced cease-fire with Colombia’s illegal armed groups

Laura Gamba |24.09.2022


BOGOTA, Colombia

Dissidents of the FARC guerrilla group have accepted the start of a recent cease-fire proposed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, the group’s leader said Friday.

A group of 20 heavily armed guerrillas dressed in camouflaged uniforms and led by Ivan Mordisco, announced in a video shot from the jungle that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents “reaffirm their commitment to engage in frank dialogues with the national government in its exploratory phase in search of solutions to the social and armed conflict that our country has suffered for decades.

Mordisco, who was believed to be dead, said the guerrillas would “avoid” confrontations with the military “as long as we are not attacked.”

The message was a response to an announcement Thursday by Petro who declared the beginning of a multilateral cease-fire between the state and all organizations willing to engage in dialogue to seek peace.

"In a matter of days a public issue will be raised: the possibility of a multilateral cease-fire that would be the beginning of the end of violence, with all those who adhere to that possibility," Petro told reporters in New York City where world leaders are gathered for UN General Assembly meetings.

The announcements were made in the context of "total peace" proposed by Petro, who seeks to negotiate deals with armed groups that are active in Colombia.

Criticism has poured in from those who say FARC dissidents are criminals without political ideology, who did not want to adhere to a peace treaty signed in 2016.

Mordisco refused to participate in any conversation at the time and gathered 500 dissidents to continue fighting and drug trafficking.

Former Defense Minister Diego Molano announced that Mordisco was killed in a military operation July 9 but his body was never found.

Nearly half of 3 million who fled Myanmar due to conflict did so since coup

The number of internally displaced persons more than doubled in the past 19 months.

By RFA Burmese
2022.09.23

People flee their homes after junta forces raided villages in Khin-U township, Sagaing region, Sept. 21, 2022. Citizen journalist

Nearly 3 million people have fled Myanmar because of armed conflict, nearly half of whom left the country after last year’s military coup, an independent research group said Friday.

The Myanmar Institute for Strategic and Policy Studies (ISP-Myanmar) said 2,930,201 internally displaced persons (IDPs), or slightly more than 5% of Myanmar’s population of 54.4 million, have fled violence in the country. It said 1,413,811 of them, or 48%, fled Myanmar amid the conflict that followed the Feb. 1, 2021, putsch.

According to ISP-Myanmar, the number of people in Myanmar who were classified as IDPs due to civil war more than doubled to 1,019,190 after the coup from 497,200 prior to the takeover.

The research group said its list was compiled from data obtained by organizations that assist refugees in conflict zones, international aid groups, ethnic armed groups, and reporting by independent media. It said the data had been checked and confirmed by its researchers.

ISP-Myanmar senior research officer Kyaw Htet Aung told RFA Burmese that all combatants in Myanmar must adopt measures to reduce civilian suffering.

“IDPs do not have full access to humanitarian aid at present and their number is rising month by month,” he said.

“How are we going to solve the problem? All the adversaries must pay more attention to military codes of conduct to minimize harm to civilians. If they can do that, I think civilian suffering would be substantially reduced. Additionally, IDPs must have better access to international aid.”

According to ISP-Myanmar, 533,833 people displaced by violence since the coup are from Sagaing region, where the military has encountered some of the fiercest resistance to its rule over the past 19 months.

Aid workers told RFA that fighting between the military and the armed opposition is intensifying and spreading rapidly throughout Myanmar, resulting in a substantial increase in the number of IDPs and civilian casualties.

IDPs from Kyaung Pyar, Kyaukkyi township, Bago region, flee their village after military raids, July 4, 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist

No access to international aid

A villager who recently fled fighting in Sagaing’s Kanbalu township said that IDPs have had to rely on assistance from people in the region because they have not received any international aid.

“We have been on the run since the moment the military entered our villages, and we’ve faced a lot of difficulties moving through the jungle with the elderly, pregnant women and children,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“People are exhausted from running and hiding for so long without food. These days, it's difficult to get even one or two baskets of rice. We have never received any international aid. We all are struggling to stay alive.”

In addition to the challenges of obtaining food and medicine, the villager said his group also faces dangers such as snake bites while sheltering in the jungle.

Similar problems have been reported in Chin state, where transportation is difficult due to the region’s terrain and lack of infrastructure.

An official with the Mindat Township Refugee Camps Management Committee, who declined to be named, told RFA that basic food items and fuel are getting expensive, leaving IDPs in dire straits.

“The price of rice has risen and with the increase in fuel prices, buying rice has become even more difficult,” he said.

“In the meantime, we are also facing the danger of landslides because it is the rainy season. There are a lot of landslides here as it has been raining non-stop for more than two weeks.”

Banya, the director of the ethnic Karenni Human Rights Group, said IDPs also endure psychological suffering when they lack food, shelter and healthcare.

“The loss of their family members and homes, and being in the jungle for a long time, leaves them stressed,” he said.

“When they go from expecting a month or two of displacement, to six months, and finally more than a year, it’s very difficult to comfort them. Their losses are heavy and it is a difficult situation to bear. Currently, everything — including health conditions — have been quite bad.”

At present, he said, only emergency measures for obtaining food and medicine can be offered to the displaced, while long-term planning has been out of the question.

Aid program status unclear

Win Myat Aye, minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management for the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), said efforts are underway to provide aid to the country’s IDPs, but he acknowledged the limitations he faces.

“With more than a year and a half of experience, our connection with aid groups has gradually become stronger and we can now provide more effective support,” he said.

“Access to funding and cash flow is a challenge, but now that the NUG has its own sources of income, it can supplement public donations. We are making special efforts in cooperation with ethnic armed groups to provide international support.”

He said he believes humanitarian assistance will soon be able to reach the displaced.

At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Meeting held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on May 6, a decision was reached that the ASEAN Humanitarian Coordination Center (AHA) would act under the supervision of Myanmar military authorities to provide aid to the country’s IDPs.

On Sept. 20 pro-junta media reported that the AHA task force held an interim meeting on the aid situation in Myanmar, but more than four months since the ASEAN decision, RFA has been unable to independently confirm the status of the program.

Attempts by RFA to contact the AHA Center went unanswered on Friday.

According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), authorities in Myanmar have killed at least 2,316 civilians and arrested more than 15,600 since the coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.