The 'apartheid' passport

A woman receives a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 at the Hospital Nurse Isabel Zendal, in Madrid (Spain) Eduardo Parra / Europa Press / Europa Press

The so-called “rich” or “developed” countries are using COVID-19 to create a new 'apartheid'. The first barrier is the division between the “vaccinated” and the “unvaccinated”. What happens to those who do not have or do not have enough vaccine? The answer is on the “poor” or “developing countries” side, according to the jargon that divides the planet according to consumption capacity. And there is a second barrier: the first-class vaccine and the second-class vaccine. Those who are welcome to the European summer are those with a brand-name vaccine: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Janssen. Calling this new exclusion project "green certificate", as the European Union claims, adds a thick layer of hypocrisy to a process whose correct name is

This time, the division is no longer by race or religion, as in the 20th century. The vaccine as an instrument of exclusion shows that the ongoing climate war will be terrible. Nature is being destroyed, and much faster in countries whose economies are based on the export of raw materials. Corrosion of habitats releases viruses previously restricted to animals, increasing the number, frequency and severity of pandemics. Laboratories, mostly located in wealthy countries, develop vaccines that will first be used to immunize their own population. And then countries create a passport or other controls with the laudable goal of reducing the number of deaths. But who is left out?

Covid-19 inaugurates a “humanitarian” reason to stop the desperate people of the planet at the borders: they can carry a lethal microorganism. Thus, those who have always been treated like

, except when they need to become cheap meat for the rich, will be left out for a justifiable reason. Or, already within these countries, they are often not included in vaccination plans. Claiming that certificates, in whatever form and name, are not mandatory is another hypocrisy.

The health arguments are legitimate, as is the discussion about the greater or lesser efficacy of vaccines.

The question, however, is what the European Union and other rich countries outside the bloc do with this information.

Once again, in the face of crisis, the answer is to build walls instead of crossing them to reach out to those who can least.

The debate, once again, is how to protect its citizens from those who can less, and can less for historical and geopolitical reasons caused directly by those who can more.

Faced with the destruction of nature and the consequent increase in pandemics, another type of thought and action is urgently needed, another type of global society.

Unfortunately, what we are witnessing is the first official chapter of

.

Translation by Meritxell Almarza.