From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Sanctions in the Era of Pandemic
Date May 18, 2020 5:59 AM
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[From Venezuela to Iran, Washingtons illegal and inhumane economic
sanctions are putting millions of lives at risk.]
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SANCTIONS IN THE ERA OF PANDEMIC   [[link removed]]


 

Phyllis Bennis
May 12, 2020
Al Jazeera
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_ From Venezuela to Iran, Washington's illegal and inhumane economic
sanctions are putting millions of lives at risk. _

US President Donald Trump is seen as he delivers a statement about
Iran in Washington,US on January 8, 2020, Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

 

Millions of people in the United States have long known what it is
like not to be able to buy food, or soap, or toilet paper. Some
because they came here from much poorer places, others because they
are among the 140 million poor or low-income people 
[[link removed]]living in the country today.

Now, millions more of us are experiencing this scarcity for ourselves
due to the COVID-19 crisis, as panic-buying cleans out supermarket
shelves, healthcare workers plead for masks and gloves, and hospitals
and states are forced to bid against each other for scant supplies of
ventilators. 

We are learning what it feels like not to be able to get what we need.
In the process, maybe we can develop some empathy for others in the
world for whom scarcity, much more far-reaching than our own, has long
been a common reality - and especially where our own government is
responsible for much of their suffering.

Unfortunately, alongside its self-aggrandising and inept handling of
the pandemic at home, the Trump administration is escalating policies
globally that are designed to make things even harder for those facing
the pandemic in countries already devastated by US-imposed economic
sanctions.

Like wars, climate change, and economic disruption of all kinds,
sanctions do tremendous damage to vulnerable people. The difference is
that economic sanctions are _designed_ to make people's lives
unbearable. The goal of US sanctions - in Iran, in Venezuela, and
beyond - is precisely to destroy the lives of ordinary people, in
hopes they will rise up in favour of whatever regime change Washington
is looking for. 

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, and long before Washington
cancelled its funding of the World Health Organization (WHO), these US
sanctions were already violating human rights and international law.
The UN Human Rights Council 
[[link removed]](UNHRC) determined
that economic sanctions "can have far-reaching implications for human
rights," including "on the right to life, the rights to health and
medical care, the right to freedom from hunger, and the right to an
adequate standard of living, food, education, work and housing." UNHRC
noted, in particular, its alarm at "the disproportionate and
indiscriminate human costs of unilateral sanctions and their negative
effects on the civilian population, in particular women and children."

Along with violating international law, economic sanctions do not even
work for the purpose they are ostensibly imposed. There is no
historical example of US economic sanctions persuading a local
population to rise up and overthrow their government in response.

Not in Iraq, where 12 years of crippling US-led sanctions led to the
deaths of more than 500,000 children in between Washington's two Iraq
wars. Not in North Korea, where decades of US sanctions and other
pressures helped keep the country isolated and impoverished. Certainly
not in Cuba, where decades of blockade have not prevented Cuban
medical missions from travelling the world to assist in crisis
response work, while providing some of the best healthcare in the
hemisphere for its own people. 

And yet, despite those years of failure, Washington continues to
impose sanctions that destroy the lives of tens of millions - even as
the coronavirus wreaks new levels of havoc on the lives of the poorest
and most disenfranchised among them.

Pressuring Iran

US sanctions are the key weapon in Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign
against Iran. They have been tightened repeatedly.

Those sanctions have been in place for decades. Before the Obama
administration signed the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, they had already
caused great suffering among ordinary people. In 2012, then-UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon 
[[link removed]]reported
that "the sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran have had
significant effects on the general population," including food and
medicine shortages.

The nuclear deal led to the lifting of some of those sanctions. But
when Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, they were slapped back on
again, along with devastating new sanctions since.

Officially, humanitarian items like medicine are exempted. But in
practice, trade restrictions - and banks' fear of retribution if they
fulfil any financial transactions with Iranian companies - make those
official exemptions a bad joke. That leads to huge price increases for
essential goods and severe shortages of crucial medicines. The
sanctions also limit oil production and exports, severely reducing
access to the levels of foreign currency required to satisfy the
population's food and medical needs.

And all of that was before the pandemic erupted.  

Now, Iran remains one of the worst hotspots as the disease speeds
across the globe. Tens of thousands of Iranians have tested positive
for COVID-19, and thousands have already died. Meanwhile, as The New
York Times reports, "secondary sanctions on financial institutions and
companies that do business with Iran have made it nearly impossible
for Iran to buy items like ventilators to treat patients." 

Human Rights Watch
[[link removed]], dozens
of US senators and congress members
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and a group of influential former US and international officials
[[link removed]] have
all urged the Trump administration to allow a humanitarian suspension
of sanctions. Instead, they are being tightened.  

In mid-March, just as the virus was wreaking human havoc across Iran,
Washington imposed new sanctions that were certain to worsen the
civilian suffering and orchestrated behind the scenes the
International Monetary Fund's denial of Iran's desperate
five-billion-dollar loan request to strengthen its shattered
healthcare system. At the same time, it hypocritically dangled an
offer of medical assistance, knowing Tehran would reject such aid from
the government responsible for its suffering.

Meanwhile, the US Navy sent two entire aircraft carrier groups -
accompanied by a B-52 bomber - to patrol the Gulf. It's an ominous
development, with the administration deliberately provoking and
seemingly threatening the pandemic-ravaged country not only with
economic devastation, but all-out war.

And then Venezuela

The US has been imposing severe political punishments on Venezuela for
years. As Venezuelan sociologist and fellow of the Transnational
Institute Edgardo Lander enumerated:

"Successive US administrations have confronted the Bolivarian process
in Venezuela from day one, backing the most right wing sectors of the
opposition both financially and politically. George W Bush backed the
coup d'etat of 2002. Congress enacted the Venezuelan Defense of Human
Rights and Civil Society act of 2014 which requires the President to
impose sanctions such as blocking assets and visa restrictions on
Venezuelan government officials judged to be responsible for
violations of human rights. In 2015 Barack Obama issued and later
renewed a new Executive Order (EO) declaring a national emergency with
respect to 'the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national
security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the
situation in Venezuela.' 

"This executive order further prepared the groundwork for economic
sanctions. Sanctions against Venezuela have thus been a bipartisan
policy, but it was the Trump administration that started imposing
direct financial, trade and economic sanctions against Venezuela,
starting in August 2017 with the express purpose of producing regime
change. This has significantly contributed to deepening the current
economic crisis." 

Now, as the Trump administration has accelerated regime change
operations against the country - even officially recognising an
opposition leader, Juan Guiado, as the country's president -
Venezuela's sanctions-driven pain has grown profoundly worse. "Regime
change through economic measures likely to lead to the denial of basic
human rights, and indeed possibly to starvation, has never been an
accepted practice of international relations," warned Idriss Jazairy,
the UN special rapporteur
[[link removed]] responsible
for economic sanctions. "Real concerns and serious political
differences between governments must never be resolved by
precipitating economic and humanitarian disasters."

Things were dire in Venezuela already. Then the coronavirus crisis
hit. 

In an urgent April 9 op-ed for The Inter-American Dialogue, three
politically diverse Venezuelan activists
[[link removed]] wrote
that "like those in Italy, Spain, and New York, Venezuelan hospitals
lack adequate testing kits, ventilators, and personal protective
equipment for staff. Unlike those hospitals, they also frequently lack
electricity, soap, and clean water. Thousands of doctors and nurses
are among the millions who have fled the country in recent years, and
many citizens who remain cannot afford to isolate at home." 

The authors are academics and human rights activists, critical of both
the government and the Guaido-led opposition, and one is also a former
deputy foreign minister and chief of staff to President Nicolas
Maduro. They are part of a larger diverse group urging all political
sides in the country to come together to combat the urgent threat of
the coronavirus.  

The problem they face is the US. The Trump administration, rather than
supporting such a move, or at the very least standing aside to allow
steps towards a national agreement, has instead indicted Venezuelan
President Nicolas Maduro, issued concrete demands for a change of
regime in the country, and tightened sanctions further.

The three Venezuelan activists warn this is a disastrous course. "The
substantial political will needed to forge an agreement" to unify the
country against the COVID-19 threat will be much more difficult to
find with the US "standing in the way," they warn. "The recent
indictments against Maduro and his aides on 'narco-terrorism' and
other charges are a worrying sign that threatens to undermine any
emerging momentum toward a humanitarian truce."

And yet, as in Iran, the Trump administration has only escalated the
military threat alongside its sanctions, deploying Navy ships 
[[link removed]]off
the Venezuelan coast. As The New York Times described it, Washington
"is seizing on Venezuela's economic pain and the coronavirus threat" -
once again deploying pain as foreign policy amid a global pandemic.

The world we want to live in?

Crises like these raise the most important questions of all. 

What world do we want to live in? Do we want a world of increasing
arms and fear and hatred of others, or a world mobilising mutual aid
against a virus that does not distinguish between any of us? 

Fortunately, across the world, people are choosing to build ties of
human solidarity. In the US, despite its government, people are
joining mutual aid committees, working to support healthcare workers
and first responders, and mobilising to demand government support for
our most impacted communities. 

What all this makes clear, however, is we cannot stop at home. In
response to a pandemic of this scale, that work must also take up the
demand to end the economic sanctions that our government is imposing
on people already facing devastating health, economic, climate and in
too many cases political emergencies. 

_Fellow PHYLLIS BENNIS directs the New Internationalism Project at
IPS, focusing on Middle East, U.S. wars and UN issues. She is also a
fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. In 2001 she helped
found and remains active with the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian
Rights. She works with many anti-war organizations, writing and
speaking widely across the U.S. and around the world as part of the
global peace movement. She has served as an informal adviser to
several top UN officials on Middle East issues and was twice
short-listed to become the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in
the Occupied Palestinian Territory._

_Phyllis has written and edited eleven books. Among her latest
is Understanding ISIS & the New Global War on Terror: A Primer
[[link removed]],
as well as the just-published 7th updated edition of her
popular Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
[[link removed]].
She has also written Before & After: US Foreign Policy and the War on
Terror
[[link removed]] and Challenging
Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power
[[link removed]]._

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