200 Million Strike in India Against Right-Wing Narendra Modi Government’s Policies

Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to the United States government about the blockade. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the U.S. government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” The special rapporteurs noted the “risks to the right to life, health and other critical rights of the most vulnerable sections of the Cuban population.”

On July 12, 2021, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel told a press conference that Cuba is facing serious shortages of food and medicine. “What is the origin of all these issues?” he asked. The answer, he said, “is the blockade.” If the U.S.-imposed blockade ended, many of the great challenges facing Cuba would lift. Of course, there are other challenges, such as the collapse of the crucial tourism sector due to the pandemic. Both problems—the pandemic and the blockade—have increased the challenges for the Cuban people. The pandemic is a problem that people all over the world now face; the U.S.-imposed blockade is a problem unique to Cuba (as well as about 30 other countries struck by unilateral U.S. sanctions).

Origin of the Protests

On July 11, people in several parts of Cuba—such as San Antonio de los Baños—took to the streets to protest the social crisis. Frustration about the lack of goods in shops and an uptick in COVID-19 infections seemed to motivate the protests. President Díaz-Canel said of the people that most of them are “dissatisfied,” but that their dissatisfaction is fueled by “confusion, misunderstandings, lack of information and the desire to express a particular situation.”

On the morning of July 12, U.S. President Joe Biden hastily put out a statement that reeked of hypocrisy. “We stand with the Cuban people,” Biden said, “and their clarion call for freedom.” If the U.S. government actually cared about the Cuban people, then the Biden administration would at the very least withdraw the 243 unilateral coercive measures implemented by the presidency of Donald Trump before he left office in January 2021; Biden—contrary to his own campaign promises—has not started the process to reverse Trump’s designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” On March 9, 2021, Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” Rather, the Trump “maximum pressure” policy intended to overthrow the Cuban government remains intact.

The United States has a six-decade history of trying to overthrow the Cuban government, including using assassinations and invasions as policy. In recent years, the U.S. government has increased its financial support of people inside Cuba and in the Cuban émigré community in Miami, Florida; some of this money comes directly from the National Endowment for Democracy and from USAID. Their mandate is to accelerate any dissatisfaction inside Cuba into a political challenge to the Cuban Revolution.

On June 23, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said that the Trump “measures remain very much in place.” They shape the “conduct of the current U.S. administration precisely during the months in which Cuba has experienced the highest infection rates, the highest death toll and a higher economic cost associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

 

Costs of the Pandemic

On July 12, Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s minister of economy and planning, told the press about the expenses of the pandemic. In 2020, he said, the government spent $102 million on reagents, medical equipment, protective equipment and other material; in the first half of 2021, the government spent $82 million on these kinds of materials. This is money that Cuba did not anticipate spending—money that it does not have as a consequence of the collapsed tourism sector.

“We have not spared resources to face COVID-19,” Fernández said. Those with COVID-19 are put in hospitals, where their treatment costs the country $180 per day; if the patient needs intensive care, the cost per day is $550. “No one is charged a penny for their treatment,” Fernández reported.

The socialist government in Cuba shoulders the responsibility of medical care and of social insurance. Despite the severe challenges to the economy, the government guarantees salaries, purchases medicines and distributes food as well as electricity and piped water. That is the reason why the government added $2.4 billion to its already considerable debt overhang. In June, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Cabrisas Ruíz met with French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire to discuss the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. France, which manages Cuba’s debt to the public creditors in the Paris Club, led the effort to ameliorate the debt servicing demands on Havana.

Costs of the Blockade

On June 23, 184 countries in the UN General Assembly voted to end the U.S.-imposed blockade on Cuba. During the discussion over the vote, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Rodríguez reported that between April 2019 and December 2020, the government lost $9.1 billion due to the blockade ($436 million per month). “At current prices,” he said, “the accumulated damages in six decades amount to over $147.8 billion, and against the price of gold, it amounts to over $1.3 trillion.”

If the blockade were to be lifted, Cuba would be able to fix its great financial challenges and use the resources to pivot away from its reliance upon tourism. “We stand with the Cuban people,” says Biden; in Havana, the phrase is heard differently, since it sounds like Biden is saying, “We stand on the Cuban people.”

Cuba’s Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said that those who took to the streets on July 11 “called for foreign intervention and said that the [Cuban] Revolution was falling. They will never enjoy that hope,” he said. In response to those anti-government protests, the streets of Cuba filled with tens of thousands of people who carried Cuban flags and the flags of the Cuban Revolution’s 26th of July Movement. Cruz said, “The people responded and defended the revolution.”

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Manolo De Los Santos is a researcher and a political activist. For 10 years, he worked in the organization of solidarity and education programs to challenge the United States’ regime of illegal sanctions and blockades. Based out of Cuba for many years, Manolo has worked toward building international networks of people’s movements and organizations. In 2018, he became the founding director of the People’s Forum in New York City, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. He also collaborates as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is a Globetrotter/Peoples Dispatch fellow.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.

DELHI, India—Rohit Sharma stood on the spot where, more than a fortnight ago, he had a bed in a night shelter. After having traveled more than 650 miles from his home city of Patna, Sharma lived for the past four years in a shelter the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) had provided.

“I used to get picked up from here for work. I would then come back and sleep here. This was my home,” said Sharma, who works in the tent-fitting industry. “Most of us fix tents or work for caterers for different occasions, like marriage or religious programs.”

Yet, everything changed on the night of March 9. That’s when bulldozers, in the presence of police, demolished temporary shelters, according to homeless people like Sharma. Now, he, along with about 1,200 people who used to live in four night shelters, sit under the sky. The site of the former shelter is close to the interstate bus terminus (ISBT) at Kashmere Gate, the northern entrance to the historic walled city of Old Delhi.

Displacing the Poor Ahead of G20 Summit

Activists and the affected said current demolitions are part of preparations for the Group of Twenty (G20) Summit that the capital city of New Delhi is preparing to host in September. G20 is an intergovernmental group made up of 19 countries plus the European Union. Altogether, the G20 represents two-thirds of the world’s population. Its stated aim is to address global economic issues. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi became its chairman last year.

Past G20 summits had been met with protests from both anti-globalization movements and groups opposing the displacement of society’s poorest to make way for a summit venue. Such was the case in 2010 in Toronto, Canada, and in 2017 in Hamburg, Germany, for example.

Similarly, before Donald Trump visited India in 2020 as the president of the United States, the huts of poor families were demolished around the venue to host him in Gujarat state in western India.

Estimates of 100,000 to more than 300,000 people live in Yamuna Pushta, where India’s largest reported slum developed in flood-prone conditions along the banks of the Yamuna River flowing through Delhi, India’s National Capital Territory (NCT).

Destroying Livelihoods

Since the demolition drive in Delhi began, poor and working-class people said police have been trying to ensure they do not linger in the area where they normally wait to secure gigs for the day.

“They take us in a bus forcefully and drop us at a distance from here and ask us not to come back,” Sharma said, adding, “We find work at this place. Contractors come here and pick us up from here. Where else would we find work?”

The location to which homeless people must be moved is supposed to be “close to where they are concentrated and close to the work site as far as practicable,” as per Indian Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ Revised Operational Guidelines for Scheme of Shelter for Urban Homeless under Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihood Mission (DAY-NULM).

However, the affected said they will struggle to find work after being forced to move.

“I have been working for the cause of the homeless for more than 20 years now. Governments never rehabilitate any homeless, like they claim to do,” alleged social activist Sunil Kumar Aledia, who is National Convenor for Homeless Housing Rights (NFHHR).

Bulldozing Homes

Aledia filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India on March 3.

“We approached the Supreme Court as the demolition drive was going on in other places, and we did not want other temporary shelters to be demolished,” Aledia said.

But, before the court could take up the matter, Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) razed the shelters.

“We were sleeping when the authorities came with bulldozers. They did not tell us the reason for demolishing our home,” Sharma told Toward Freedom. “Some of the inhabitants were manhandled by the police.”

Little information is available about the source of the demolition drive. NCT Urban Development Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj wrote to DUSIB on March 16, inquiring under whose direction the action was taken. The letter that the Times of India obtained stated:

“Director DUSIB has given a statement in the social media that the demolition has been carried out on the orders of Govt. of NCT, Delhi. DUSIB may kindly specify who in Delhi Govt. has given these directions? And whether these orders were recorded or merely oral?”

DUSIB remains mum.

“The matter is sub judice in the Supreme Court, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment at this stage,” P.K. Jha, an official of DUSIB, told Toward Freedom. Sub judice describes a matter under a court’s consideration and, therefore, official commentary is prohibited.

‘We Only Need Food and a Make-Do Shelter’

“Some big event is going to take place here. That’s why they broke this shelter,” said Arun Kumar Jha, another occupant of the night shelter, sitting on the footpath across the road. He frequents different night shelters in the area.

Dozens of homeless still sit in the place where their shelter was until a few weeks ago. They have always relied on voluntary organizations, temples and individuals for food. Across the road, approximately 300 meters (328 yards) away from the shelter is a revered Hanuman Temple. Hanuman is a Hindu god with the face of a monkey known for his devotion via service. The homeless crowd outside the temple has increased after the demolition. They find it easier to find food and money from worshippers visiting the temple.

“Food is not a problem here, many people come and serve us, that’s why we (homeless) do not want to leave this place. We only need food and a make-do shelter,” Jha told Toward Freedom. “Government takes us in a bus from here, but never provides food.”

Parva Dubey is a freelance writer based in New Delhi. Parva can be followed on Twitter at @ParvaDubey. 

Nicaragua leapt forward to defend its national self-determination against U.S. global hegemony when it announced earlier this month it had discontinued diplomatic relations with Taiwan and was ready to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

“Nicaragua declares that it recognizes that there is only one single China in the world,” said Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Denis Moncada at the Third Forum between the Communist Party of China and Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean. There, the political parties leading the Chinese and Nicaraguan governments—both in the crosshairs of U.S. economic, diplomatic and military aggression—agreed to develop friendly relations. 

This move opens up the small Central American country’s economy to the People’s Republic of China, a country of 1.4 billion people that is rapidly edging toward surpassing the United States and becoming the biggest economy in the world.

Taiwan: Washington’s Beachhead In China

Nicaragua’s move to recognize China is no different than what the United States, Japan and Canada voted in favor of in 1971 at the United Nations General Assembly. Resolution 2758 stipulated the United Nations “expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” (the leader of the Chinese nationalists, whom the communists struggled against) and change China’s name as a member of the UN Security Council from the “Republic of China” to the “People’s Republic of China.” 

Nicaragua first established relations with Taiwan in the 1990s, after U.S.-backed President Violeta Chamorro took power in 1989 in a surprise defeat for the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN). Taiwan is an island off the Chinese coast that Chinese right-wingers fled to upon the 1949 communist victory.

The United States replied to the move using the language of humanitarian interventionism it has deployed to exploit and destroy countries around the world.

“The Ortega-Murillo regime continues to make self-serving decisions at the expense of the Nicaraguan people, who stand to suffer from the loss of a reliable, democratic partner in Taiwan,” tweeted Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs at the U.S. State Department. “We encourage the int’l community to continue strengthening its relationships with Taiwan.”

The Ortega-Murillo regime continues to make self-serving decisions at the expense of the Nicaraguan people, who stand to suffer from the loss of a reliable, democratic partner in Taiwan. We encourage the int’l community to continue strengthening its relationships with Taiwan.

— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 10, 2021

Relations between the Biden administration and the Ortega government have recently taken a plunge. First, the United States intervened in Nicaragua’s elections by calling them a “sham” prior to Election Day and despite the presence of “232 international election observers,” said Michael Campbell, Minister Advisor for Foreign Affairs. After the FSLN won the election with 75.92 percent of the votes, U.S. President Joe Biden signed the “Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act of 2021,” also known as the RENACER Act. This law calls for the United States to monitor Nicaragua’s relationship with Russia as well as U.S. sanctions that would disrupt multilateral financing from institutions like the World Bank. Later, the Biden administration banned all Nicaraguan government officials, along with their spouses and children, from entering the United States.

Nicaragua is now the fourth country in the region to recognize China. Panama took the step in 2017, then came El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018, and Honduras, which may make the same move after left-wing presidential candidate Xiomara Castro’s recent victory. 

Recognizing one China comes on the heels of the Nicaraguan government’s decision to withdraw from the Organization of American States (OAS) on November 19.

“We have seen what the U.S. and the European Union are capable of doing and have to prepare accordingly,” Campbell said. “But it’s the FSLN government’s job to lead the Nicaraguan people toward development.”

Nicaragua and the Belt and Road Initiative

The third China-CELAC Forum involved approximately 117 political parties and organizations from 30 Latin American and Caribbean countries. CELAC stands for Community of Caribbean and Latin American States. At the forum, they proposed strengthening their relationship and solidarity with China.

“Nicaragua actively supports and is ready to consult on Belt and Road cooperation documents, with a view to signing them as soon as possible,” Moncada said. In 2020, trade agreements between Taiwan and Nicaragua reached $168 million, while trade with China accounted for less than $50 million. A potential trade ceiling exists with the much-smaller Taiwan, with its population of 23 million. 

In addition, the new initiative opens up markets for Nicaragua’s agricultural business. 

“There is a lot of enthusiasm because communication channels have already opened up for the structuring of cooperation projects, commercial exchange and investment projects,” said Fausto Torrez. He leads international relations for the Rural Workers’ Association (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo [ATC]). 

The FSLN government has a record of working to ensure the rights of farmers, as well as of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in the autonomous regions on the Caribbean coast. That includes bringing electricity and paved roads to these once-underdeveloped areas. The Red Nacional Vial, a 24,763-kilometer (15,387-mile) paved road, connects the Pacific Ocean coast with the Caribbean Sea coast. It has been touted as the key to connecting Nicaraguan farmers with international markets. The World Bank also praised the project for uplifting Afro-descendant people. “This region, before the road construction, could only be reached by air during most of the year owing to heavy rains and impassable infrastructure (the rainy season lasts nine months in that region),” a 2020 World Bank report stated.

Nicaragua belongs to the Central American Common Market (CACM), which includes Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The United States is CACM’s largest trade partner, while China is the second-largest. 

“These agreements come in the framework of [defending] food sovereignty,” Torrez said. “Therefore, China arrives with many possibilities to improve the country’s situation.”

As some see it, China is repairing holes U.S. imperialism has left in the region. 

“Latin Americans know only too well what imperialism looks like, in both its colonial and modern forms,” activist Carlos Martinez recently wrote. “They have witnessed CIA-sponsored coups from Guatemala to Chile, from Brazil to the Dominican Republic.” 

The new wave of governments working with China are doing so based on mutual respect. In 2020, $315 billion in agreements between Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and China had been recorded. 

“With projects such as the sea port on the Caribbean, improvements to our airports, roads, irrigation system and energy infrastructure, we will produce more and more efficiently,” Campbell said.

Nicaragua receives the first 200,000 doses of a donation of 1 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines. The batch arrived from China with a Nicaraguan delegation headed by @LaureanoOrtegaM, Minister of Finance Ivan Acosta, and Chinese Foreign Affairs Representative Yu Bo. pic.twitter.com/QF3thXADW5

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) December 12, 2021

China also has been at the forefront of providing the Global South with aid since the start of the pandemic. For example, between mid-February 2020 and June 2020, China donated $128 million worth of ventilators, test kits, masks, protective suits and many more life-saving items to Latin America and the Caribbean.

“This strengthens Nicaragua’s international relations in all fields,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said in his first public statement after the FSLN signed the agreement with the Communist Party of China (CPC). For example, the country’s National Human Development Plan will continue to prioritize poor and vulnerable sections of society, which includes rural producers. Campbell said this new relationship represents an opportunity to diversify exports in a large new market.

Two Revolutions

Ortega made clear the historic significance of acknowledging one China.

“It hurts (the United States) more when it comes to Nicaragua, which is a revolution meeting again with another revolution,” he said. 

Both the FSLN and the CPC are products of national liberation movements against a colonial power. They agreed to develop friendly relations based on “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality, mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence,” stated the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Ortega also pointed out the hypocrisy of the United States demonizing countries that establish diplomatic relations with China while the United States continues to trade with China.

Yet, sanctioned and blockaded countries that establish ties with China weaken the U.S. stranglehold.

“Now is the time to improve and strengthen A.L.B.A.,” Torrez said of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, a political, economic and social alliance in defense of independence and self-determination in the Americas.  

Abraham Marquez is a freelance journalist from Inglewood, California. He is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) and a 2021 University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Fellow.