‘We must avoid a tragedy’: European Council head on Covid-19 mistakes

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28 October 2020

‘We must avoid a tragedy’: European Council head on Covid-19 mistakes

The email dropped late on Tuesday night: “A word from the president.”

                                                    <p class="no_name">This was a missive from <a class="search" href="/topics/topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_person=Charles+Michel" rel="nofollow">Charles Michel</a>, the <a class="search" href="/topics/topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_organisation=European+Council" rel="nofollow">European Council</a> president who has taken to sharing his thoughts in the form of a newsletter. A former Belgian prime minister, Michel is the man who has chaired the meetings of the European Union’s national leaders since December, with the task of nudging them towards consensus. Since March, that has meant a lot of pandemic co-ordinating: on re-opening borders, on sponsoring vaccines, on helping the economy.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">The subject of his letter? It’s all gone wrong.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">“Within the space of just a few weeks, the situation has escalated from worrying to alarming. Now we must avoid a tragedy,” Michel wrote. “This was not how things were supposed to turn out.”</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">It comes after a week in which 1.1 million new Covid-19 infections were logged in <a class="search" href="/topics/topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_location=Europe" rel="nofollow">Europe</a> alone. An average of 1,000 Europeans died of the virus each day, a rise of one third compared to the week before. Hospitals across the continent began warning that they had no beds left, and that too many staff were sick with the virus to care for the patients they had.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">How had this happened?</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">“When in late spring we succeeded in drastically slowing the speed at which Covid-19 was spreading, the priority became the recovery of economic, social and cultural life,” Michel wrote.</p>
                                                                                                        <aside class="related-articles--instream has-3"/>
                                                                <p class="no_name">“This choice needed to be backed up by a robust testing and tracing policy. . . At European level, this plan of action has not achieved the desired results.”</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">In other words, once citizens brought infections down to low levels by staying at home for months, their governments failed to put in place adequate measures to stop them rising again.</p>
                                                    <h4 class="crosshead">Deceptive feeling</h4><p class="no_name">Instead, leaders pinned their hopes on the rapid appearance of a vaccine and focused on addressing social and economic concerns, Michel wrote. On top of this, “fatigue and a deceptive feeling of getting back to normal” allowed the virus to begin circulating again.</p>

                                                    <p class="no_name">Nowhere was this deceptive feeling of normality more evident than in <a class="search" href="/topics/topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_location=Brussels" rel="nofollow">Brussels</a> itself.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">Early on, top officials and political organisations in the city reverted to old habits of presenteeism and began requiring staff to be present in the office again, even for jobs that are easily done remotely. It was normal to spot MEPs having working lunches with groups of colleagues inside busy restaurants. National delegations began holding events for journalists that could only be covered in person, in rooms with windows that do not open. Objections – and there were objectors – were steamrolled over.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">It should have come as little surprise that infections among officials and their staff shot up from September on. It seemed every few days a new prominent person tested positive. Top officials were in and out of quarantine like a jack-in-the-boxes. It began to disrupt meetings: first a meeting of national leaders had to be delayed because Michel himself was in isolation, then attendees began pulling out at short notice.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">Nevertheless, a “business as usual” mood prevailed. This was “living with the virus”, we were told. Hand sanitiser was ubiquitous. Rapid tests were available – for the VIPs. Everyone wore masks, albeit along with the self-defeating practice, endemic among politicians, of removing them in order to speak.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">It was common to hear wishful talk that perhaps the virus had somehow become weaker or that people had perhaps become immune. There was a widespread sense of invulnerability. Politicians and the successful people who surround them do not view themselves as frail. “Even if I got it,” many seemed to reason, “I would surely be a mild case.”</p>
                                                    <h4 class="crosshead">‘No one is safe’</h4><p class="no_name">This changed when Sophie Wilmès went into intensive care. Wilmès was prime minister of <a class="search" href="/topics/topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_location=Belgium" rel="nofollow">Belgium</a> until October 1st, and led the country through the pandemic, attending all those meetings with Michel and her EU counterparts. She was serving as foreign minister and deputy prime minister in Belgium’s new government when she was admitted to hospital. She tweeted: “no one is safe” from the virus.</p>

                                                    <p class="no_name">That someone aged 45 with no apparent medical conditions can end up in intensive care should not have been news to Brussels. And yet the bubble was still shaken that it had happened to one of their own. Simultaneously, the sheer number of infections was starting to strain even the highest levels. The European Commission revealed its testing service could now only cater for priority staff.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">Then chancellor <a class="search" href="/topics/topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_person=Angela+Merkel" rel="nofollow">Angela Merkel</a> put her foot down. <a class="search" href="/topics/topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_location=Germany" rel="nofollow">Germany</a> holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council. Two days ago a spokesman announced that all physical meetings – except for the absolutely essential – were off.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">The national leaders are to meet over video conference on Thursday. “The Covid-19 pandemic is intensifying across member states,” a letter convening the meeting read. “We are all facing renewed pressure on our societies, economies, healthcare systems and public morale.”</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">On the agenda are testing, vaccines, and “the scope for facilitating mutual assistance between member states”. In plain English, what that last item means is: some member states are running out of hospital beds. Can anyone help?</p>

Column: Religion, politics and Mark Curran

By

Steve Chapman

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28 October 2020

Column: Religion, politics and Mark Curran

Trump ally Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor, has pronounced Democrats “a godless party.” In reality, two-thirds of Democratic primary voters have a religious affiliation, and Democrats showed no qualms about choosing a devout Catholic as their presidential nominee. But the party is open both to non-Christian believers and to nonbelievers — who, at a Republican convention, might have flashbacks to the Salem witch trials.

Glavin: On the death of Samuel Paty – Shouldn’t freedom of religion mean freedom from religion too?

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28 October 2020

Sustainable urbanization critical to COVID-19 recovery, better quality of life — Cities will be critical for the world to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst recession for decades, according to the latest report published by UN-Habitat, the UN agency working on urban issues.

The French school teacher’s brutal murder by a radical Islamist set off an outpouring of revulsion across the country. But somehow, several world leaders are attacking France’s president over it.

Relatives and colleagues hold a picture of Samuel Paty during the ‘Marche Blanche’ in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris, on Oct. 20, 2020, after the teacher was beheaded for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

BERTRAND GUAY / AFP via Getty Images

Samuel Paty was a quiet 47-year-old middle-school civics teacher at the Collège du Bois d’Aulne, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, in the suburbs of Paris. He would walk to and from school from his second-floor apartment in nearby Eragny, where he lived alone with his five-year-old son. After class, he liked to play tennis. By all accounts passionately devoted to teaching, Samuel Paty was otherwise a man of temperate disposition, well-regarded by his students and by his colleagues.

That was just three weeks ago. Now, Paty’s name is coming up in blood-curdling slogans shouted in the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and in arguments and imbecilities erupting in Ankara, Riyadh, Islamabad and Tehran. Ambassadors have been summoned. Diplomats have been recalled. Tuesday this week was officially International Religious Freedom Day. If there was anything worth observing about it, it’s that religious freedom must mean freedom from religion, too, or it means nothing at all.

How Samuel Paty’s name ended up in all of this is a horrible story.

At the Collège du Bois d’Aulne, Paty often used art as a medium for teaching the French national curriculum. In his lessons on the French republic’s rigorous commitment to secularism and free speech, Paty’s custom was to encourage class discussion by considering a pair of cartoons. They were the caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, where terrorists allied with al-Qaida, claiming the right to avenge a blasphemy, murdered 11 of the magazine’s staff on Jan. 7, 2015.

Ordinarily, Paty would invite students to look away or briefly leave the room if they preferred to be spared Charlie Hebdo’s vulgar depictions, and then the class would proceed, and debate would unfold in a civil way. No exceptional umbrage had been taken by anyone until this year. Earlier this month, lurid allegations about Paty’s class began to circulate on Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

Originating in rabble-rousing loudmouths associated with what it is usually called radical Islam, the online expressions of outrage veered into incitement to murder. Education ministry officials and the police were called in to investigate allegations of Paty’s “Islamophobia.” Disciplinary action was considered – then sensibly rejected outright.

On Oct. 16, at around 5 p.m., an 18-year-old fanatic confronted Paty on a street near the school, killing him, beheading him and mutilating his body. The killer, a Chechen immigrant, broadcast pictures and videos of his atrocity on Twitter and Instagram, boasting that he’d “avenged the prophet.” He was later shot and killed in a confrontation with police.

Paty’s murder set off an outpouring of revulsion across France, where the right to blaspheme and the strict secularist doctrine of laïcité have been law for more than a century.

The Charlie Hebdo outrage was just one incident in a series of Islamist atrocities carried out across France, including the single deadliest terrorist event in French history, the November 2015 massacres at the Bataclan nightclub, the Stade de France and several restaurants and bars that left 131 people dead. The following year, a Tunisian jihadist drove a cargo truck through the crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people. Since then, the atrocities have been kept to a dull roar, two or three people stabbed to death here, three or four people shot and killed there. Since 2017, French police have broken up and thwarted 32 attempted terrorist operations.

Within hours of Paty’s beheading, French President Emmanuel Macron gave every impression that he’d had quite enough. His statement was terse and direct. “Ils ne passeront pas,” Macron said, borrowing from the anti-fascist rallying cry of the 1930s: They shall not pass. A dozen high-profile Islamists have been detained for questioning, and among other measures, Macron’s government is considering a law that would ban home-schooling, which is being used as a cover for “radical” Koranic schools.

And now, the hysterical propaganda that roiled around Paty’s class at the Collège du Bois d’Aulne has spread outward into the United Nations’ member states with the most dismal records in upholding religious freedom and freedom of conscience.

The clownish Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been busy transforming the secular Turkish republic into his own personal neo-caliphate, is questioning Macron’s mental acuity, calling for a boycott of French products, demanding an apology from France for allowing Charlie Hebdo to publish a saucy cartoon of him on its cover, and accusing Macron of subjecting French Muslims to “a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II.”

Not to be outperformed in stupidity, Pakistan’s national assembly passed a resolution damning Macron for his persistent refusal to condemn the depiction of Mohammed in cartoons, and demanding that the oafish Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, recall Pakistan’s ambassador to France. Fun fact: Pakistan doesn’t have an ambassador to France. He was reassigned to China three months ago.

For his part, Khan has issued an open letter to the Muslim leaders of the world to “collectively counter the growing Islamophobia in non-Muslim states, especially western states.” Khan has been quiet, meanwhile, about China’s internment-without-trial of perhaps two million Uighur Muslims, the forced sterilization of Uighur women, the systematic obliteration of centuries-old Muslim holy places in Xinjiang, and the reduction of the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities into captive populations in forced-labour gulags.

The uproar in the Arab countries has been muted and mixed. The Saudis and the Egyptians have reiterated the offence many Muslims take to the taboo of depicting Mohammed in any form, but have also expressed sympathy and solidarity with the people of France as they grieve the death of Samuel Paty.

As for French Muslims, the response is similarly mixed. Several French imams have declared Paty a shaheed, a martyr, and joined in laying wreaths in his honour at the Collège du Bois d’Aulne.

In his statement observing the International Day of Religious Freedom, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, François Philippe-Champagne, said this: “As a multicultural, multi-faith and multi-ethnic society, Canada will continue to stand up for human rights, including the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief, at home and around the world.”

That would be nice. We might also stand up, for once, for the human right to be free of religious belief, and to be protected from religious bullies and fanatics, at home and around the world.

Terry Glavin is an author and journalist.

UN builds momentum for restoring forests as world enters key decade for ecosystems

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28 October 2020

UN builds momentum for restoring forests as world enters key decade for ecosystems

The world has made considerable progress in the past decade, according to the new edition of FAO‘s international forestry journal Unasylva, entitled Restoring the Earth – the next decade, since 63 countries, subnational governments and private organisations have already committed to restoring 173 million hectares, and regional responses are making significant advances in Africa and Latin America.

Table of Contents

Meet the challenge

The goal is to meet the “Bonn Challenge” – the world’s largest voluntary forest landscape restoration initiative, which was launched in 2011. It is a global target to bring 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands into restoration by 2020 and 350 million by 2030.

“Societies worldwide will need to be convinced of the global restoration imperative by rational economic argument, compassion for current and future generations, and an emotional connection to nature”, according to the authors of one article in the journal.

The Unasylva issue looks at prospects for meeting the Bonn Challenge and mechanisms for measuring and accelerating progress, and examines work going on in China, Kenya, Brazil, Madagascar, Cambodia and Sao Tome and Principe.

It also discusses how restoration work can be scaled up, including various initiatives that are underway to increase funding and boost local stakeholders and technical assistance.

Enormous potential

“These have enormous potential to be mainstreamed because of their cost-effectiveness, adaptability, applicability to many ecosystems and contexts, and ease of implementation”, the opening editorial in Unasylva said.

Next year sees the start of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration,  a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, which runs from 2021 until the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2030.

“There is a great opportunity for the Bonn Challenge process and its contributing regional platforms to provide a model for aspiring actors to embrace or reinforce restoration efforts in other ecosystems, such as wetlands and coral reefs,” senior officials at the  International Union for Conservation of Nature wrote in one of the articles in Unasylva.

BYU religion professors collaborate on projects, texts in Book of Mormon…

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28 October 2020

BYU religion professors collaborate on projects, texts in Book of Mormon...

The Book of Mormon is the center key to the research of The Book of Mormon Academy. (Photo illustration by Erika Magaoay)

A group of BYU religion professors meets to discuss key truths found within the Book of Mormon every month of the school year as part of the Book of Mormon Academy.

Religion professors are not required to participate in the Book of Mormon Academy, but they all have the opportunity to attend monthly meetings and collaborate together. The fruits of their work are scholarship and completed projects, such as volumes of text.

The academy was founded in 2013 by the leadership of the Department of Ancient Scripture. A chair is chosen to lead the group, which changes every two to three years.

Daniel Belnap, a professor of ancient scripture, is a former Academy chair. He said for the first few years, the academy met together and talked about their thoughts on and approaches to the Book of Mormon. “One of the things that emerged from that was we decided that there were certain areas of the book that we would like to research together and approach,” Belnap said.

Illuminating the Jaredite Records was published
in September 2020. (BYU Religious Studies Center)

Two book volumes have been published by the academy. In 2018, the academy released its first book titled, “Abinadi, He Came Among Them In Disguise.”

During Belnap’s time as chair, the academy members compiled “Illuminating the Jaredite Records.”

“‘Illuminating the Jaredite Records’ became the second volume in what we hope to be a series of volumes from the Book of Mormon Academy,” Belnap said.

Current Department of Ancient Scripture chair Shon Hopkin was the academy’s first chair. As a current member and previous chair of the Book of Mormon Academy, Hopkin provided insight into the Academy’s purpose.

“The goal was to promote and enhance scholarship and teaching on the Book of Mormon here at BYU,” Hopkin said.

The Book of Mormon Academy meets monthly to discuss projects. (Shon Hopkin)

Ancient scripture professor Charles Swift is the current chair of the Book of Mormon Academy, where he has served for one year so far. While he has been chair, the academy worked together to complete a volume on Samuel the Lamanite, which is now under review.

At the academy’s first meeting of Fall Semester, the members decided they would like to start working on a new volume. According to Swift, the topic hasn’t been chosen yet. “Hopefully by the time I’m done, we will have published more volumes,” Swift said.

Swift explained there is not a requirement for a chair to lead the Academy in putting together a new volume, but the decision on what to work on is discussed as a group.

The Book of Mormon Academy also volunteered to review essays for the BYU Religious Education Student Symposium, and at times lecturers are invited to speak on specific topics the Academy is focused on. The group then has the opportunity to share ideas and brainstorm with the lecturers.

For Swift, the best thing about being the chair has been the opportunity to work with his colleagues at BYU who share a common love for the Book of Mormon. “It’s a very rewarding experience,” Swift said.

Cardinal Hollerich: Europe is called to build a future for the whole world – Vatican News

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28 October 2020

Cardinal Hollerich: Europe is called to build a future for the whole world - Vatican News

By Vatican News staff writer

Europe needs new policies to better cater to the needs of our brothers and sisters on the move and it needs to rediscover its Christian identity as it strives to build a peaceful and just future. These are concepts expressed by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, as he spoke with gratitude of Pope Francis’ letter marking a series of important anniversaries that define the European continent as we know it.

Cardinal Hollerich, President of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the EU (COMECE) was commenting on the Pope’s letter to Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, on Tuesday. In it, the Pope retraces the history and values of Europe and talks of his dream for fraternity and solidarity among nations amid a period marked by individualistic tendencies.

In an interview with Vatican Radio, Cardinal Hollerich expresses how “thrilled” he is that Pope Francis, “a Pope [from] outside of the European continent, has such a wonderful undertsnding of Europe and can give us such an encouragement.”

There are “so many” policies that need to be considered, says the Cardinal highlighting that one issue the Holy Father mentions in his letter as he looks to the “Europe of the future” is the welcoming of migrants “and the people who have to leave their countries” for various reasons.

Cardinal Hollerich recalls numerous reports COMECE has received over the last few days, specifically mentioning news regarding the actions of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, “at the Greek border, pushing people back into the Mediterranean sea, next to the Libyan border”.

“Surely their policies must change”, he says.

Listen to our interview with Cardinal Hollerich

Cardinal Hollerich continues by stating that “it is more than a change of policy” that is needed. What needs to change, he says, is how we view the European Union: it is important to “gain a spirit of the founders and have a full view of Europe”.

“We should never forget that Schuman chose to start with the economic part of European integration”, says Hollerich. Though this economic aspect has “developed very much”, he says, there lies the “great danger of the European Union” being reduced from a vision of “European integration to mere economics”, and that could lead to a “reduction of men and women to simple agents of the economy or consumers”.

Cardinal Hollerich expresses joy at hearing Pope Francis say that Europe needs to rediscover its identity. He explains that, to him, this means that “We have a history, and not everything is bad”. Noting that there are “many” bad points, such as the two great wars of the last century, Hollerich states that “we are not the slaves of history”. There is so much that Europe can give to the world, and we must do this with “a new humility,” something that must be done “together, with our sisters and brothers of other continents.”

Finally, Archbishop Hollerich says “I think it’s beautiful that the Pope highlights a certain European identity which stems from culture and religion – also the cultural part of religion – but which does not linger to the past like a slave.”

“We can build a future.”, he concludes: “We are called to build a future. Not only for us, but for the whole world.”

Lamoureux twins announce book to be released in February

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28 October 2020

Lamoureux twins announce book to be released in February

But it hasn’t slowed them down.

The twins from Grand Forks, who led the U.S. women’s hockey team to Olympic gold in 2018, wrote a book detailing their journey.

The book is titled: Dare to Make History: Chasing a Dream and Fighting for Equality.

It will be released Feb. 23 — one day past the third anniversary of the gold-medal game in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The book is already available for pre-order on Amazon.

“It alternates between my voice and Mo’s voice,” Jocelyne said. “We close with one voice. In true fashion with how we’ve lived our lives together and accomplished our dreams together, there’s probably no other way we could write a book.”

The book details not only their rise as hockey players from Grand Forks to the world’s stage with the U.S. Olympic Team, but it also details their fight for gender equality with USA Hockey.

In 2017, the U.S. team threatened to boycott the World Championship, which was scheduled for Plymouth, Mich., unless certain equality issues were met by USA Hockey. The two sides came to an agreement before the tournament and the American team went on to win gold.

The following year, they went to the Olympic Games and won the country’s first gold in women’s hockey in 20 years in dramatic fashion.

Trailing Canada 2-1 late in the third period, Monique Lamoureux-Morado scored the game-tying goal. Then, Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson scored the game-winner with a dazzling move in the shootout.

Jocelyne said the book has been about 18 months in the making.

“One of our friends and mentors, David Cohen, who helped us get involved with the work we did with Comcast, basically encouraged us that our story would be interesting enough for a book,” Jocelyne said. “He helped us put a proposal together. You have to get a book agent to shop a proposal to publishers. We are fortunate enough that Radius thought the proposal was interesting enough to support our book.”

Both Jocelyne and Monique wrote the book while raising young children. They worked with a collaborator on it.

“We would be working from home, typing away together, editing pages together,” Jocelyne said. “It was definitely an interesting process and a unique one. At times, we were reading the same pages over and over and over.”

Why did Pope Francis pray for Nigeria on Sunday? – Vatican News

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28 October 2020

By Fr. Benedict Mayaki, SJ

For nearly two weeks, young Nigerians have been taking to the streets in protest against police brutality and calling on the government to shut down a notorious police unit known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).

They accuse this police unit, originally formed in 1992 to deal with cases of armed robbery and other criminal activity, of crimes including torture, extortion, illegal arrests and extrajudicial killings.

The youths also extended their demands to include calls for an end to corruption and better governance in light of the high level of economic inequality in the country, marked with sharp contrasts between the rich and poor. According to the World Poverty Clock, just over half of Nigeria’s approximately 200 million people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than two dollars daily.

Table of Contents

Pope Francis’ closeness

Pope Francis, during the Sunday Angelus, appealed for an end to the violent clashes in Nigeria between security forces and #endSARS protesters demonstrating against police brutality.

“Let us pray to the Lord,” the Pope said, “so that any form of violence might be avoided, in the constant search for social harmony in the promotion of justice and the common good.”

#endSARS protests

On 3 October, a video alleging that a SARS official had shot a young man and made off with his Lexus SUV went viral on the internet. Within hours the video had generated public outcry across social media platforms. Over the following days, as more Nigerians shared their own experiences of brutality with the hashtag #endSARS, the online protests moved into the streets. By 8 October, protesters across several states in the country began to organize daily mass demonstrations.

Though the protests which saw thousands of young Nigerians gathered in select venues were mostly peaceful, some of the protesters accuse authorities of hiring hoodlums to disrupt the demonstrations by confronting protesters and causing damage to property. Many of the people allegedly hired to discredit the protests are unemployed with little to no job prospects, fall easy prey to manipulation by people willing to pay them.

As the protests continued to gain momentum, the #endSARS protesters were, in some areas, met with resistance by security personnel who deployed tear gas canisters, water cannons and live ammunition to disperse the crowds.

According to Amnesty International, at least 10 protesters had been killed by 15 October. However, a defining moment for the protests was the evening of 20 October when witnesses and Amnesty International reported that at least 12 people were killed and many others injured when soldiers opened fire on a crowd of mostly peaceful protesters in the Lekki suburb of Lagos.

Two days later, President Mohammadu Buhari addressed the nation calling for an end to the protests but made no mention of the shooting deaths of the protesters in Lagos. Although first appearing to be responding to the demands of the protesters, the Nigerian government drastically shifted to employing measures to end the protests.

Over the last few days, the protests have taken a different and sometimes violent turn. Mobs of Nigerians have overrun and looted several government-owned warehouses containing food allegedly meant to be distributed during the Covid-19 lockdown earlier this year. In states such as Lagos, Kogi and Kaduna, among others, storage facilities holding tons of relief materials have been broken into and emptied out. There have also been recent instances of arson as private and government-owned properties have been set ablaze by angry crowds.

Many victims of police violence

Many Nigerian youths – the demographic propelling the protests – report being profiled and targeted for appearing to be fashionable, well off, having body tattoos, expensive phones or for sporting hairstyles considered different from the perceived norm.

A 2020 report by Amnesty International titled: “Nigeria, Time to End Impunity”, details horrifying cases from 82 people recounting their experiences of torture, extortion, sexual violence, seizure of money and property, illegal arrests and extrajudicial killings from officials of the SARS police unit.

“I want a Nigeria where there is hope, love, peace and unity,” a participant at the protests told Vatican News, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

In his opinion, the #endSARS protests began in reaction to long-running instances of violence, brutality and impunity of members of the Nigerian Police Force. A member of his family had also been a victim of police brutality from SARS.

“My cousin was harassed this year, he almost got shot… I was crying when he told me about it. I cannot imagine losing my cousin – that’s the only cousin I have – to a policeman and no one would do anything about it.”

Clampdown on protests

He recounts the terrifying experience of being present during the shooting on Tuesday evening.

“We were a peaceful bunch of people; we did not kill anyone; we didn’t spoil property…They were shooting at us…They were shooting at peaceful protesters,” he said.

He recalls that the lights around the Lekki protest venue were turned off before the shooting started around 6:43 pm. In response, the protesters sat on the ground waving the national flag and singing the national anthem, hoping that the soldiers would respect the flag and stop shooting.

Many of the injured had to be taken to hospitals by the protesters themselves as the soldiers would not allow the ambulances through to them on the protest grounds. The shooting, he said, lasted for about thirty minutes.

Humanity before conflict

Regarding the Pope’s appeal for peaceful protests in Nigeria on Sunday, he welcomes it as a sign of the Pope’s care for the country.

“We are meant to love each other. We are meant to be there for each other,” he said.

“Humanity comes before any conflict – that’s how it should be,” he added. Young people are dying and the government is trying to sweep this under the carpet. We need all the help we can get.”

He dreams of a Nigeria full of hope, love, peace and unity. A nation where “the child of anyone can become someone without knowing anyone.”

The government’s response

The Nigerian police chief, on Saturday, ordered the mobilization of security personnel to regions of the country where the protesters were beginning to get disruptive.

Despite not mentioning the 20 October shooting deaths in his address to the nation, Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina said in a statement on Sunday that the President vows to ensure justice for “the peaceful protesters who lost their lives.” Adesina also reiterated the President’s call for “peace, brotherhood and inter-communal harmony,” urging Nigerians “not to turn against one another in hate.”

Although the government announced the disbandment of SARS on 11 October, police authorities, in the same breath, announced its replacement with a Special Weapons and Tactics Unit (SWAT). This announcement did not pacify the protesters who continued their demonstrations, accusing the government of an empty renaming exercise without proper structural reforms.

Cameroon: Bishop thanks Pope for appeal for Kumba school shooting victims – Vatican News

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28 October 2020

Cameroon: Bishop thanks Pope for appeal for Kumba school shooting victims - Vatican News

By Vatican News staff writer

“It is very heartbreaking. Since then the people have not been happy…children are mourning, parents are mourning.”

Those words of grief were expressed by Bishop Agapitus Nfon of Kumba, as he gave a grim description of the reaction of the people of Kumba after gunmen attacked a private school and killed at least six school children on Saturday.

Bishop Nfon, in an interview with Vatican News, explained the situation in Kumba, and highlighted the long-running conflict in the country’s North-West and South-West regions.

Table of Contents

Pope Francis’ closeness to Kumba

During the General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis expressed sorrow over the tragic murders, and prayed that the “tormented regions of the North-west and South-west of the country may find peace.” The Pope also expressed his nearness to the families, the city of Kumba and the whole of Cameroon.

Bishop Nfon thanked Pope Francis for “condemning” the barbaric attack, adding that it will go a long way to touch many hearts.

“Many people will know that the Church is against what is happening,” the Bishop said. “And the people in the Diocese of Kumba will feel very consoled by the words of the Holy Father.”

Fear and sorrow

The Bishop explained that since the Saturday tragic murders, children in the region have not been going to school, even though schools remain open, due to a mixture of fear and sorrow. He noted that many of the people have been in mourning for the victims of the heinous act.

“They have stayed home because of fright; they are very frightened,” he said. However, he expressed his desire to see the children return to school after they have come to terms with the sad event.

Some schools in Cameroon have only recently reopened following a four-year shut down due to the ongoing fight by groups calling for the creation of an independent state to be known as Ambazonia.

Socio-political situation

Cameroon’s four-year conflict has not been without its casualties. Bishop Nfon pointed out that the ecclesiastical province of Bamenda, made up of five dioceses in the northwest and southwest region, has been particularly hard-hit in the crisis.

He explained that some of the people live in the bushes and some others have become internally displaced in towns around the country. Many others, – about 50,000 – have fled into neighboring Nigeria as refugees, fleeing from the suffering and the insecurity that the conflict has brought in its wake.

“The civilians, the innocent people are sandwiched,” Bishop Nfon explained. “They are really suffering. They are afraid of the military and those fighting for independence. They are in misery.”

Appeal of the Bishops

Bishop Nfon said that at the beginning of the conflict in the North-West and South-West regions of the country, the Bishops of the ecclesiastical province of Bamenda wrote a memorandum explaining the situation and suggesting possible steps to quell the tensions. But he said their efforts were mostly ignored by all parties.

“Our message was that there should be inclusive dialogue between the government and those fighting for independence,” said the Bishop, adding that even the leaders of the independence movement who are in prison should be released and allowed to participate in negotiations with the government.

In October 2019, the Cameroonian government, in an attempt to end the crisis, called for talks dubbed “National Dialogue.” The government also granted “special status” to the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions in December 2019.

Bishop Nfon, however, said this dialogue initiative of the government was “not a dialogue”, because the representatives of those concerned were not present.

“How do you dialogue with people who are not there?” he asked.

Appealing for an end to the violence, the Bishop urged the military forces and “the boys fighting in the bushes” to put down their arms, because “we cannot discuss, we cannot find peace, we cannot find justice, we cannot find tranquility in a society when they are fighting.”

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28 October 2020