Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention state unequivocally that an Occupier must provide its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”. However in relation to huge Subject avoidable deaths from deprivation, and ventilator non-provision in the context of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, the US and Australia grossly violate the Geneva Convention in Occupied Afghanistan, and Apartheid Israel grossly violates this in Occupied Palestine.
(1). Annual avoidable deaths from deprivation are huge in impoverished Occupied Afghanistan and Occupied Palestine but zero for the rich and war criminal Occupiers.
The key parts of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (the Fourth Geneva Convention) are as follows: “Article 55. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate …
Article 56. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining , with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties” [1-3].
The deadly consequences of Occupier violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention can be quantitated as avoidable mortality from deprivation. Avoidable mortality (avoidable death, excess death, excess mortality, premature death, untimely death, death that should not have happened) can be defined as the difference between the actual deaths in a country and deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics (birth rate and proportion of children). For poor and high birth rate countries the baseline mortality rate as a percentage of population is about 0.4% per annum (pa) . Thus for Occupied Afghanistan the mortality rate is presently 0.62% pa (data from the UN Population Division [4]) and thus the avoidable mortality rate” = 0.62% -0.40% = 0.22% pa or 2.2 per thousand of population pa. Occupied Afghanistan has a population of 38,298,000 (2020), and thus the avoidable deaths from deprivation in Occupied Afghanistan total 38,298 thousand x 2.2 per thousand = 84,256 pa [5, 6].
Annual avoidable deaths from deprivation in the wealthy countries of the US, Australia and Apartheid Israel are essentially zero (0) [2]. For impoverished, high birth rate countries “avoidable mortality from deprivation” is about 1.4 times the “under-5 infant death rate” which is 3,000 pa for impoverished Occupied Palestine. Accordingly one can assess annual avoidable mortality from deprivation” for Occupied Palestine as 1.4 x 3,000 = 4,200 [7].
However the per capita GDP is a miniscule $521 (Occupied Afghanistan), $57, 374 (Occupier Australia) and $62,975 (Occupier US) [8]. Shockingly, nnual avoidable deaths from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease on a global comparative basis total 84,300 per year (Occupied Afghanistan) but are effectively zero (0) per year for the war criminal present Occupiers, the US and Australia.
Similarly, the per capita GDP is $3,124 (West Bank and the Gaza Concentration Camp) and $41,715 (Occupier Apartheid Israel) [8]. Shockingly, annual avoidable deaths from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease on a global comparative basis total 4,200 per year (for the Occupied Palestinian Territories) and zero (0) per year (for Occupier Apartheid Israel).
Those responsible for the continuing and deadly 19-year Occupation of Afghanistan and the 53-year Occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories are genocidally racist war criminals who continue to remorselessly act in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
(2). Ventilators per million (/M) people are 504/M (Occupier US), 173/M (Occupier Australia) and 407/M (Occupier Apartheid Israel) versus 8/M (Occupied Afghanistan), 38/M (Occupied Palestine) and 13/M (Gaza Concentration Camp).
In the most serious progression of the COVID-19 disease the damage to lung tissue is so great that patients need to be intubated and mechanically ventilated by expensive ventilator machines. The massive attempts to “lower the corona virus infection curve” through travel bans, case detection, case tracking and social distancing (by closure of schools and businesses at huge economic cost) were impelled by the threat of heroic health workers being overwhelmed by huge numbers of sick patients and having too few ventilators. Indeed in New York doctors had to resort to a variant of 2 patients per ventilator.
However as set out below, the Occupier countries considered here have vastly more ventilators than their impoverished conquered Subjects, this being in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention by the war criminal Occupiers.
Re Occupied Afghanistan:
Occupier US (population 331.0 million) has 166,700 ventilators/331.0 million people = 504 ventilators per million people [9, 10].
Occupier Australia (population 25.5 million) has 4,400 ventilators/25.5 million people = 173 ventilators per million people [11].
Occupied Afghanistan (population 38.3 million) has 300 ventilators/ 38.3 million people = 8 ventilators per million people [12].
Re Occupied Palestine:
Occupier Apartheid Israel (population 8.6 million) has 3,500 ventilators/ 8.6 million people = 407 ventilators per million people [13].
Occupied Palestinian Territories (population 5 million) has 190 ventilators/ 5.0 million people = 38 ventilators per million people [14].
Occupied West Bank (population 3 million) has 135 ventilators/ 3.0 million people = 45 ventilators per million people [14, 15].
Gaza Concentration Camp (population 2 million) has 65 ventilators/ 5.0 million people = 13 ventilators per million people [14, 15].
Thus the Gaza Concentration Camp has 31 times fewer ventilators than Apartheid Israel, the West Bank has 9 times fewer ventilators than Apartheid Israel, and the Occupied Palestinian territory as a whole has about 11 times fewer ventilators than Apartheid Israel.
Final comments.
There are many other comparisons that can be made to illustrate the gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention by these war criminal Occupiers, the US, Australia and Apartheid Israel. About half the Subjects of Apartheid Israel are Indigenous Palestinians and of these about 73% are excluded from voting for the government ruling them – egregious Apartheid [16-20]. Australia is second only to Trump America as a fervent supporter of nuclear terrorist and democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel and hence of the obscene crime of Apartheid [21].
“Holocaust’ refers to the death of huge numbers of people, whereas “genocide” is defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” [22]. The Palestinian Genocide has involved 2.1 million Palestinian deaths from violence , 0.1 million, or from deprivation, 2.1 million, since the UK invasion of the Ottoman Empire in WW1 [7]. The Afghan Genocide has involved perhaps 1 million violent deaths and as many as 6 million avoidable deaths from egregious deprivation over 2 decades [5, 6].
Decent people will not tolerate this genocidally racist criminality in gross violation of International Law, and will act by (a) informing everyone they can (notwithstanding egregious Mainstream mendacity, the Awful Truth is just a few mouse clicks away) , (b) demanding arraignment of the war criminal leaders and their collaborators before the International Criminal Court (ICC), and (c) by urging and applying Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, collectives, corporations, and countries disproportionately complicit in these ongoing atrocities. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity – as in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, we cannot walk by on the other side.
References.
[1]. “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”, 12 August 1949: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf .
[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal on the web : http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/ .
[3]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, Preamble: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .
[4]. UN Population Division: https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/ .
[5]. “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .
[6]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .
[7]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .
[8]. “List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita .
[9]. David Shepardson and Carl O’Donnell, “U.S. ramps up ventilator production as need wanes”, Health News, 21 April 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-ventilators/u-s-revs-up-ventilator-production-for-coronavirus-patients-as-need-wanes-idUSKBN22232Q .
[10]. Kathryn Diss, “The US was warned it could run out of ventilators. So why wasn’t its healthcare system prepared for coronavirus?”, ABC News, 12 April 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-12/why-is-the-us-out-of-ventilators-amid-coronavirus/12137178 .
[11]. ABC News, “Coronavirus pushes government to commission 2,000 new ventilators for Australian ICUs”, ABC News, 9 April 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-09/australia-to-build-2000-ventilators-coronavirus/12136424
[12]. Zahra Rahimi , “Only “300” ventilators in Afghanistan to treat Covid-19: MoPH”, TOLO, 8 April 2020: https://tolonews.com/afghanistan/only-300-ventilators-afghanistan-treat-covid-19-moph
[13]. Rami Ayubb, “Israel retrofits home-use respirators into ventilators to treat coronavirus”, Reuters, 17 April 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-israel-ventilators/israel-retrofits-home-use-respirators-into-ventilators-to-treat-coronavirus-idUSKCN21Y282 .
[14]. Agence France-Presse “Palestinian university unveils home-made ventilator”, VOA, 23 April 2020: https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/palestinian-university-unveils-home-made-ventilator .
[15]. Gideon Levy, “Israel trading in ventilators for helpless Gazans is inhumane”, Haaretz, 15 April 2020: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-trading-in-ventilators-for-helpless-gazans-is-inhumane-1.8768709 .
[16]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide & Australia’s Aboriginal Genocide compared”, Countercurrents, 20 February 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/02/20/apartheid-israels-palestinian-genocide-australias-aboriginal-genocide-compared/ .
[17]. Gideon Polya, “Israeli-Palestinian & Middle East conflict – from oil to climate genocide”, Countercurrents, 21 August 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/08/21/israeli-palestinian-middle-east-conflict-from-oil-to-climate-genocide/ .
[18]. Gideon Polya, “End 50 Years Of Genocidal Occupation & Human Rights Abuse By US-Backed Apartheid Israel”, Countercurrents, 9 June 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/06/09/end-50-years-of-genocidal-occupation-human-rights-abuse-by-us-backed-apartheid-israel/ .
[19]. Gideon Polya, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights & Palestinians. Apartheid Israel violates ALL Palestinian Human Rights”, Palestine Genocide Essays, 24 January 2009: https://sites.google.com/site/palestinegenocideessays/universal-declaration-of-human-rights-palestinians .
[20]. Gideon Polya, “70th anniversary of Apartheid Israel & commencement of large-scale Palestinian genocide”, Countercurrents, 11 may 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/05/70th-anniversary-of-apartheid-israel-commencement-of-large-scale-palestinian-genocide .
[21]. John Dugard, “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the crime of Apartheid”, Audiovisual Library of International Law: http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html .
[22]. UN Genocide Convention: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide.
Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: https://countercurrents.org/polya170612.htm ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ; Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .
The Me Too movement was meant to be more than a howl or rage with a trending hash tag. It was a surge that threatened to pulverise all before it, arming accusers with weapons of merit and disarming predators who had, for decades, acted in beastly fashion from positions of power. It did net some mighty scalps and also, at stages, ruined careers without trial and tested evidence. But paradoxically, it failed to make an impression on the Trump phenomenon, where genital grabbing and locker room humour exhibited in the Access Hollywood tape made little impression upon his candidacy for the White House.
Where it did make an impression – at least for a stretch of time – was with a good number of establishment GOP types who withdrew their support for his candidacy, only to then fall in line after the Trump victory. “I don’t want my boys growing up in a world where the President of the United States is allowed to speak or treat women the way Donald Trump has,” reflected a melancholy Tom Rooney, Representative from Florida.
At the time, Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus was besieged by urgings to knock Trump off the candidacy. As Tim Alberta of Politico Magazine noted, within hours of the Access Hollywood tape rippling the political waters, Priebus “fielded scores of phone calls from the most prominent people in Republican politics: congressmen and senators, governors, donors, activists and his own RNC members.” The common theme: Trump had signed his death warrant, politically speaking, and needed to be replaced by the safer Mike Pence.
Now, with dedication mixed with some confusion, the Democratic establishment is attempting to build the dykes around Joe Biden, hoping that he won’t drown in the allegations of sexual impropriety that have, it has to be said, lingered around him like a pong. There is a presidency to be won, and the tight lipped puritans are closing ranks to minimise the damage.
The threat to Biden has come from Tara Reade, a former staffer who claims to have been subjected to the sort of Trump-induced nightmare that produced marches and defiance after his election. On April 9, she filed a criminal complaint with the Washington, D.C. police, accusing Biden of sexual assault that is said to have taken place in 1993.
The reaction to Reade suggests a degree of pause and revision being undertaken in Democratic ranks and, it has to be said, the punditry. Sadly for Reade, she has become a Rorschach test for the partisan politics of belief in the murky field of sexual transgression. For Lucy Flores, herself having written about an unwanted kiss from Biden, “We’re never going to get to the foundation of this problem if we’re constantly talking about it in a political context.”
But political context it is, thickly and all the way. The efforts vary in terms of neutralising Reade, from the libellous to the glacial. Edward-Isaac Dovere of The Atlantic acidly questioned her account, because a person who could sympathise with Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin, must be unhinged and mendacious on matters sexual. Lawyer and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard W. Painter chortled in discovering Reade’s effusive praise. “Is this the same person who just made an accusation against @JoeBiden? If so – this game’s up.”
Suddenly, qualifications of circumspection are being introduced, necessary suspicions sown. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times reflected that the Democrats had a fundamental problem in always setting those “standards that come back and bite them”. The liberal notion “that all women must be believed” made her wince. For Dowd, an example of this came in the form of opposition to Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, Brett Kavanaugh, the convenient gargoyle of alleged sexual impropriety. “The eagerness to pin Kavanaugh produced a giddy new environment in which incredible tales, like that of Julie Swetnick, who claimed to have witnessed Kavanaugh at parties with rape lines, were treated as credible.”
Margaret Talbot at the New Yorker trots out a similar line. Disoriented, the Democrats are facing “the unasked-for moral dilemma of whether it is hypocritical to question the veracity of Joe Biden’s accuser, Tara Reade, when so many of them had fully embraced the #MeToo movement’s (always too simplistic) exhortation to ‘believe women’.”
In terms of media coverage, the most common sort dealing with Reade’s accusations is that of cold indifference. For the most part, she has been ignored by that hideous current often called “the mainstream”, leaving such guerrilla outlets as the Intercept to spread the news with bomblets of revelation. As Branko Marcetic pondered in Jacobin, the standards of reporting on Trump’s sexual conduct from more progressive and centrist outlets differ markedly from those on Biden, “the man many see as his best-placed rival”. His point of contrast: the broader and more expansive coverage given to the accusations against Trump levelled by E. Jean Carroll a year ago. The conclusion reached is simple: “Reade has been treated unlike any high-profile accuser of the past three years.”
Some movement to rectify this disparity is taking place, with the decision by MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes giving the story a degree of oxygen. “There have been moments I think for many of us, all of us, where we have heard about accusations against someone that we find ourselves desperately wanting not to believe.”
Biden’s own response is that it “never, never happened” while calling on the US National Archives to “identify any record of the complaint [Reade] alleges she filed.” This risks becoming a matter of archival, and for that reason distant, appraisal. For her part, Reade favours a broader inquiry while she becomes grist to the mill of talking heads, and hopes to get a peek around the Biden papers held at the University of Delaware. (Biden’s response to that has been one of steadfast refusal.)
Trump, when he does not have them anywhere else, will be rubbing his hands with glee as Biden’s woman problem gets fanning. A central ploy in his weaponry has never been to elevate his opponents in order to improve his own merit. His method, rather, is one of lowering, diminishing, reducing. The Democrats, in turn, are delivering. This election is suitably living down to expectations.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
The pandemic Covid-19 which originated in Wuhan province, China sometime in December 2019 made its cruel impact as a global deadly disease in January 2020 declared as a pandemic on March 11, 2020. It then spread to other countries causing fear, panic and deaths.
Currently more than 3.5 millions have been infected with about 240,000 deaths reported. Sri Lanka reported the first victim on January 27, 2020 who was a Chinese visiting Sri Lanka as a tourist. The first Sri Lankan national was tested positive on March 10, 2020. Since then more than 700 cases has been reported positive, most of them in the Western province particularly in the Colombo district including the Welisera Navy Camp totalling 360 while Northern and Eastern provinces reported only 24.
Sri Lankan government has set up quarantine centers where more than 3,500 suspected persons are under quarantine including 31 foreigners. Above all 32 quarantine centers have been set up in the north, the details are as follows:
- Vadamarachi 10 centers
- Mullaitivu 06 centers
- Vavuniya 05 centers
- Mannar 04 centers
- Chavakachcheri 03 centers
- Kilininochi 03 centers
- Madu 01 centre
Most of the quarantine centers in the above areas have been set up in Colleges and Schools seized by the military to house the suspected Covid-19 personnel mostly security forces who had been transported in buses from the South. More than 3000 Covid-19 suspected persons are said to be residing in these centers. It has to be stated that these centers being Colleges and Schools are located in the areas where there is a density of Tamil population living in the surrounding areas.
However, the selection of Tamil areas and educational institutions in the North reveals a sinister motivated scheme and hidden agenda being executed by the dictatorial President Gotabaya’s regime assisted by the military which is slowly and steadily assuming control of civilian’s lives and administration ignoring and discarding the local administration. These high handed ruthless and arbitrary moves of the Government have been condemned by human rights activists but with no avail.
The emerging question is whether these unjustified moves constitute and fall within the definition of genocide as defined in the UN Convention 1948 and falling within the provision of said Convention which among others “Includes acts causing serious bodily or mental harm to member of an ethnic or racial group with intent to destroy or even a part of them.”
It can be perceived that these acts of militarization, seizure of schools and occupying them with a tarnished Security Forces and others mostly from the South were deliberately undertaken by the Government without any consultation with Health Officials and Local Authorities. The fact that an alleged war criminal Major Savendra de Silva is in charge of Covid-19 Relief Operations plainly confirms the genocidal motive of the Government which selected educational institutions in the North targeting the Tamil civilians.
The lethal consequences and harms which befall from these naked discriminatory actions would be as follows:
[a] The Tamil civilians and students living in the surrounding and adjacent areas of schools and colleges are forced to live in fear, insecurity and uncertainty due to the presence of the Security Forces alleged to have committed war crimes etc. A possible mingling and interaction with civilians could cause health hazards to them.
[b] The civilians are also unknowingly brought under surveillance while curtailing their freedom of movement and rights of expression.
[c] The risk of spread of Covid-19 by any infected member of Security Forces is high which could initiate a spiral of infections among the hitherto unaffected civilians.
[d] The risks of deaths of innocent affected civilians are also high due to absence of proper medical facilities and prompt attention and care in these areas.
[e] The fact that North and East reported less than 30 out of more than 700 positive cases of Covid-19 in Sri Lanka must have been taken into account by the Government before opening these quarantine centers in these locations to open up the risks of infections in these safe areas inhabited by Tamil civilians.
[f] Besides, the sufferings of the already traumatized Tamil victims of war who are yet to recover due to the lethargic handling of the government are further compounded by these ulterior moves of the Government.
[g] There are reports that the Governors in the Northern and Eastern Provinces are not approving the use of Emergency Funds by the Local Government Officials who have been forced to call upon the Civil Societies to provide relief to the starving civilians. It is also reported that those who offered assistance were obstructed, intimidated and even arrested by the Security Forces. This inhuman action is inflicted only to accelerate the death of Tamil civilians which is nothing but a genocidal crime.
[h] The sudden and unnecessary setting up of check-points in the North is another glaring and intimidation and discriminatory policy by the Government targeting the Tamils who would be subjected to mental harm and distress besides creating ill-will and hostility towards the Government. Furthermore these actions are providing opportunities for the Security Forces to harass and intimidate the civilians even with possibilities of detentions and arrests.
Undoubtedly, the Tamil civilians in the North and East are inflicted with mental and physical harm leading to serious health issues which eventually would hasten their deaths, the proximate causes being the militarization and quarantined centers occupied by suspected Covid-19 personnel living among them. This is just another clear act falling within the definition of structural genocide which is being subtly and quietly executed by the Government with the assistance of the Military Officials as has been happening since 2009.
The other dark face of Covid-19 is its naked exploitation and utilization for political gains and mileage by the ruling government which appears to be steadily and slowly inching towards a militarized dictatorial government.
Thambu Kanagasabai – LLM [London] Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
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