Pakistan: Deadly Heat Wave, Deadly System

June 29, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

In mid-June, more than 1,200 people died in southern Pakistan, especially in the city of Karachi, during a deadly heat wave. Temperatures reached as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius) for several days. While it is often very hot in that region this time of the year, the high temperatures that lasted for days were extreme and unusual. Thousands of people were brought to hospitals to be treated for dehydration, heat stroke, and other ailments. The city morgue became filled beyond capacity. Most of the victims were elderly. or homeless, or worked in the streets as day laborers.

The heat wave struck right at the start of Ramadan, the month of fasting when people holding to Islamic practices are not supposed to drink liquids or eat during the day. Islam is the official state religion in Pakistan, and a law says people can be sent to prison if they eat or drink during fasting hours, or even if they give someone else something to eat or drink. Some religious authorities advised people to drink water if they needed it, but many people could not or did not. In the scorching heat of the unrelenting daytime sun, not drinking water was deadly for those whose health was the most vulnerable, and for those whose work is extremely draining even under mild weather conditions.

Heartbreaking news videos showed Karachi residents describing their friends, relatives, or strangers collapsing in the intense heat. A young man says in one video, “I just saw a dead body, and when I asked the family what happened, they told me that the father had died because there was no ambulance available. These are the conditions under which we are living.”

These “conditions under which we are living” have to do, first of all, with the realities of the present-day world, where there is a sharp division between a handful of “advanced” capitalist-imperialist countries that dominate the planet’s wealth and resources, and the vast majority living in poor, oppressed countries like Pakistan. This extreme lopsidedness means that, even as health care is a horror for many in a country like the U.S., the health situation is even worse for billions of people around the world. People have died from heat waves in imperialist countries—but in Third World countries the state of health resources, water treatment, and sewage disposal, etc. means that heat waves (or floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters) have much more devastating impacts on people’s lives. A heat wave that hit India just a month earlier, in May, killed more than 2,200 people.

Karachi, with more than 22 million people, is the third-largest city in the world—its population doubled in the last 15 years with people fleeing poverty in the countryside or areas in the north targeted by U.S. drone attacks in the name of the “war on terror.” There are also many refugees from other countries, such as Afghanistan. These millions coming into the city have ended up in slums sprouting up almost overnight. There is “development” in Karachi—driven by and benefiting the Pakistani elite, who are tied to foreign capitalism-imperialism. The Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif points out one aspect of such “development” in relation to the heat wave crisis: “Trees have been cut down to widen roads, overpasses have gobbled up footpaths; there are few shaded bus stops. Without water and without shade, while fasting or pretending to fast, people going to and coming back from work just fell on the streets and died.” (“In Karachi, a Fatal Mix of Heat and Piety,” op-ed in the New York Times, June 26, 2015)

Along with the horrendous effects of imperialist domination are the effects of religious fundamentalism and superstitious beliefs. A prominent Islamic cleric in Karachi issued a fatwa, or a religious edict, saying people could eat and drink in daytime during this heat wave if a doctor says their health was in danger. But the homeless and day laborers have little or no access to doctors, and there is also the continuing pull of tradition on people. And, as Pakistani writer Hanif points out, “Even if they could get past their inhibitions, there was no water to be had. All the little tea stalls, roadside restaurants, small juice or snack vendors disappear from the streets during fasting hours. In this month you can walk miles without finding a sip of water.” And so people continued to die because they could not get water in the scorching heat.

Another factor is the impact of global climate change. A former Pakistani environmental official said, “There has been a rise in the Earth’s average temperature from 15.5°C to 16.2°C [59.9°F to 61.2°F] over the last 100 years due to which we are experiencing such extreme weather conditions both in summers and winters.” (Express Tribune, June 21, 2015) Although this heat wave or other particular weather events can’t be directly attributed to climate change, scientists are analyzing that global warming and other climate changes are leading to more extreme storms, droughts, floods, etc. And while this affects the whole planet, it hits most devastatingly on the oppressed countries and people of the world. (See “The Human Costs of Climate Change.”)

Extreme lopsidedness in the world between capitalist-imperialist countries and the poor and oppressed countries and people... the enforced ignorance of religious fundamentalism... global climate change... these are all huge questions facing people in Pakistan and around the world.

Different forces put forward different ideas and programs about how to deal with these huge and urgent problems. All these programs need to be evaluated on how deeply and scientifically they deal with actual reality—and whether they offer real solutions. The basic truth is that all of these big questions can be addressed through actual revolution—through the overthrow of capitalist-imperialist rule and domination that aims and digs away at the deep roots of the horrors confronting the world, with its sights set on emancipation of all humanity.

 

 

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