ARGENTINA – Huge demonstrations have been held across Argentina to protest against education spending cuts.

Students and university professors were joined by the country’s powerful trade unions and opposition political parties as hundreds of thousands rallied against the effect of President Javier Milei’s radical austerity measures on public universities. It was one of the largest in a series of protests the South American nation has seen since the far-right president took power in December.

Aerial footage showed a sea of people occupying the centre of Bueno Aries for hours. Similar scenes were witnessed in several other cities, with organisers calling for a pushback against budget cuts that they say have put universities on the verge of closure. The University of Buenos Aires claimed that more than 500,000 people took part in the protest in the capital alone.

Milei had brandished a chainsaw during his election campaign to symbolise his wish to decimate public spending and shrink the government in the face of serious economic challenges. He has been shuttering ministries, defunding cultural centres, laying off state workers and cutting subsidies in a bid to right the economy. Last Monday, he defended his radical approach as he celebrated the country’s first quarterly fiscal surplus since 2008. “We are making the impossible possible even with the majority of politics, unions, the media and most economic actors against us,” he declared.

The education system in Argentina is considered to be one of the best in Latin America. The public universities are free of charge, with some 2.2 million people studying at the state-run institutions, including many from other countries in the region.

However, Milei has called them bastions of socialism in which students are “indoctrinated”. As part of its austerity policy, his government recently cut the budget of public universities by 71 percent. Meanwhile, Argentina is currently suffering some of the highest inflation rates in the world at nearly 290 percent.

“At the rate at which they are funding us, we can only function between two or three more months,” said Ricardo Gelpi, rector at the University of Buenos Aires, which has produced Nobel Prize winners and many Argentinian presidents. Universities have warned they may be forced to shut down and strand hundreds of thousands of students mid-degree, which has come as a shock in a country that considers free and quality university education a birthright. “We are defending the public, open and free university, which is one of the great achievements of our people and which we will not give up,” said Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Porez Esquivel at the rally in front of the Casa Rosada, the seat of government. “We are defending our right to live in dignity.”

(Al Jazeera)…[+]

GAZA – The UN’s human rights chief has said he is “horrified” by the destruction of Gaza’s Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals and the reports of “mass graves” being found at the sites after Israeli raids. Volker Türk called for independent investigations into the deaths.

Palestinian officials said they had exhumed 283 bodies at Nasser, some with their hands tied. It is not clear how they died or when they were buried.

Israel’s military said claims that it buried bodies there were “baseless”. But it did say that during a two-week operation at the hospital in the city of Khan Younis in February, troops “examined” bodies buried by Palestinians “in places where intelligence indicated the possible presence of hostages”. Ten hostages who have now been released have said that they were held at Nasser hospital for long periods during their captivity.

Prior to the Israeli operation at Nasser, staff there had said they were being forced to bury bodies in the hospital’s courtyard because nearby fighting prevented access to cemeteries. There were similar reports from al-Shifa before the first Israeli raid on the hospital took place in November. The Israeli military has said it has raided a number of hospitals in Gaza during the war because Hamas fighters have been operating inside them – a claim Hamas and medical officials have denied.

The war began when Hamas gunmen carried out an unprecedented cross-border attack on southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and taking 253 others back to Gaza as hostages.

A spokeswoman for the UN Human Rights Office said it was currently working on corroborating reports from Palestinian officials that 283 bodies had been found in Nasser hospital’s grounds, including 42 which had been identified. “Victims had reportedly been buried deep in the ground and covered with waste,” Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva. “Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others… were found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes.”

Mr Türk called for independent, effective and transparent investigations into the deaths, adding: “Given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators.” “Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law. And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees, and others who are hors de combat [not participating in hostilities] is a war crime.”

Last Monday, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defense force told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today programme that it had received reports from local Palestinians that the bodies of a “large number” of people who had been killed during the war and buried in a makeshift cemetery in the hospital’s courtyard were moved to another location during the Israeli raid. “After research and investigation, we learned that the occupation [Israeli] army had established a mass grave, pulled out the bodies that were in Nasser hospital, and buried them in this mass grave,” Mahmoud Basal said.

The IDF said that its forces had detained “about 200 terrorists who were in the hospital” during the raid, and that they found ammunition as well as unused medicines intended for Israeli hostages. It also insisted that the raid was carried out “in a targeted manner and without harming the hospital, the patients and the medical staff”.

However, three medical staff told the BBC last month that they were humiliated, beaten, doused with cold water, and forced to kneel for hours after being detained during the raid. Medics who remained at Nasser after the Israeli takeover said they were unable to care for patients and that 13 died because of conditions there, including a lack of water, electricity and other supplies.

(BBC)…[+]

The factions of the NDP, the BEP and the NPS on Tuesday urged the government to give Health Minister Amar Ramadhin the boot. The opposition which also urged the government to reject the policy of the minister no longer believes that he can get the job done because he has repeatedly failed to improve the nation’s healthcare. “The nation’s healthcare sector is about to end up in a downward spiral as the public healthcare sector is increasingly being commercialized. The government is incapable of keeping its promises regarding payments within the healthcare sector. The government has also failed to take action aimed at investigating irregularities and to tackle corruption within the healthcare sector. The friends and family policy seriously damages the nation and quality healthcare is no longer guaranteed because of the many uncertainties. We urge the government to investigate things at the Regionale Gezondheidsdienst, the State Health Insurance Fund (SZF) and the BGVS and to take immediate action if irregularities are detected. The government must also take immediate action to keep physicians and nurses from leaving the country and it must also come up with a strategy aimed at addressing the shortage of nurses and doctors.”

The faction of the opposition also condemned the fact that no action was taken although reports indicate that the number of infections of communicable diseases such as hiv are growing at an alarming rate. The BGVS does not have all of the required medication in stock and patients have no other choice than to dig deep in their wallets to buy their medicines. No improvements are made in the pharmaceutical sector which is why many medicines that are listed in the National Medical File are not accessible to patients. The factions want the government to take action as soon as possible to prevent the situation in the nation’s healthcare sector from getting worse…[+]