World

Pope Francis will make a highly sensitive visit to Canada as planned next month, the Vatican confirmed Thursday, despite problems with his knee that caused him to postpone a trip to Africa.

The programme was released for the July 24-30 visit to Edmonton, Quebec and Iqaluit, where the pontiff will meet with Indigenous survivors of abuse committed at residential schools run by the Catholic Church.

The 85-year-old has cancelled numerous events in recent months due to pain in his right knee that has forced him to use a wheelchair at official events, prompting intense speculation about his health — and his future.

However, the trip to Canada is an important step in his efforts to address the global scandal over sexual abuse of children by clergy and decades of cover-up.

Pope Francis is expected to repeat an apology he delivered to Canadian delegations who visited the Vatican in April.

“We know that the Holy Father was deeply moved by his encounter with Indigenous Peoples in Rome earlier this year, and that he hopes to build on the important dialogue that took place,” said Canadian Archbishop Richard Smith, who is coordinating the visit.

“We pray this pilgrimage will serve as another meaningful step in the long journey of healing, reconciliation and hope.”

Around 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were enrolled from the late 1800s to the 1990s in 139 residential schools across Canada, as part of a government policy of forced assimilation.

They spent months or years isolated from their families, language and culture, and many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers.

Thousands are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect. More than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered since May 2021 at the schools.

– Pope’s ‘limitations’ –

During what will be the first papal trip to Canada since John Paul II visited in 2002, and the fourth ever, Francis will travel to the west of the country, the east and far north.

Canada’s Catholic Bishops Conference said the “very busy schedule” would focus on reconciliation but also provide a chance for the wider Catholic faithful to meet their spiritual leader.

It added: “Due to his advanced age and limitations, it is expected that participation by Pope Francis at public events will be limited to approximately one hour.”

Francis suffers chronic arthritis in his knee, according to Vatican sources, and has also spoken of an injured ligament.

On June 10, the Vatican postponed a trip scheduled for early July to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo “at the request of his doctors”, to avoid jeopardising ongoing therapy on his knee.

A scheduled trip to Lebanon in June was also postponed due to health reasons, according to that country’s government — although the Vatican had never confirmed the visit.

The schedule changes have sparked fresh speculation about the future of Francis, who was elected pope in 2013 after his predecessor Benedict XVI resigned. The German pope had cited his declining mental and physical health.

However, a Vatican source told AFP earlier this month that speculation Francis might also be considering stepping down was far-fetched.

“In the pope’s entourage, the majority of people don’t really believe in the possibility of a resignation,” the source said.

Rumours that he might step down also flared last year after the pope underwent colon surgery,  prompting him to tell a Spanish radio station that the idea “hadn’t even crossed my mind”. 

The death toll from 11 days of Indigenous demonstrations in Ecuador over fuel prices has risen to three, a rights group said Thursday, after another protester died in clashes with police.

Dozens of people have also been injured in the countrywide demonstrations that Indigenous groups have vowed to continue until their demands are met.

In the southern town of Tarqui, a 38-year-old protester died Wednesday, the Alliance of Human Rights Organizations reported on Twitter, accusing the security forces of using violent tactics.

“A tear gas cannister was found next to” the body of Marcelino Villa, the organization said.

The police, for its part, said Villa had died of a medical condition that occurred “in the context of the demonstrations.”

According to the medical report, it added, bruises to the man’s stomach and right knee were “several days old.”

Two other people died on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Alliance, which also reported 92 wounded and 94 civilians arrested since the protests — concentrated in the capital Quito — started on June 13.

Officials say 117 in the ranks of police and soldiers have been injured.

– Mass discontent –

Thousands prepared Thursday for another day of revolt, which has seen main roads barricaded with burning tires and tree branches amid a state of emergency in six of the country’s 24 provinces.

The government has rejected demands to lift the emergency measures that were imposed due to the sometimes violent demonstrations called by the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie).

Conaie led two weeks of protests in 2019 in which 11 people died and more than 1,000 were injured, and which resulted in the then-president abandoning plans to reduce fuel price subsidies.

An estimated 14,000 protesters are taking part in the mass show of discontent nationwide — the bulk, some 10,000 of them — in Quito.

The capital is under a night-time curfew.

Ecuador, a small South American country riddled with drug trafficking and related violence, has been hard hit by rising inflation, unemployment and poverty — all exacerbated by the pandemic.

The protesters’ demands include a cut in fuel prices which have risen sharply in recent months, jobs, food price controls, and more public spending on healthcare and education.

Conaie — credited with ending three presidencies between 1997 and 2005 — insists the state of emergency be lifted before it will negotiate, but the government has said this “would leave the capital defenseless.”

Official data showed the economy was losing about $50 million per day due to the protests, not counting oil production — the country’s main export product.

State-owned Petroecuador has reported almost 64,300 barrels in lost production with more than 230 wells shuttered by demonstrations in the Amazon.

And Chinese company PetroOriental said protesters had occupied and paralyzed some of its wells in the Amazonian Orellana province.

Producers of flowers, another of Ecuador’s main exports, have also complained about their wares rotting as trucks cannot reach their destinations.

EU leaders met Thursday to discuss Ukraine’s long-sought bid to join the bloc, even as tensions between Brussels and Moscow deepened over gas supplies and Russia closed in on key cities in the embattled Donbas region.

“This is a decisive moment for the European Union… A choice must be made today that will determine the future of the union, our stability, our security and our prosperity,” EU council president Charles Michel told journalists ahead of the talks.

“We are waiting for the green light, Ukraine has earned candidate status,” the head of the Ukrainian presidency Andriy Yermak said on Telegram.

But joining the EU is still years away, and the potential consequences for Ukraine’s allies loomed large over the talks, and ahead of the G7 and NATO meetings in the following days.

Western officials denounced Moscow’s “weaponising” of its key gas and grain exports in the conflict, with a US official warning of further retaliatory measures at the G7 summit in Germany starting Sunday.

Germany ratcheted up an emergency gas plan to its second alert level, just one short of the maximum that could require rationing in Europe’s largest economy after Russia slashed its supplies.

“Gas is now a scarce commodity,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters, urging households to cut back on use.

France is now aiming to have its gas storage reserves at full capacity by early autumn, and will build a new floating methane terminal to get more energy supplies by sea, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said.

A Kremlin spokesman reiterated its claim that the supply cuts were due to maintenance and that necessary equipment from abroad had not arrived.

In Ankara meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “weaponising hunger” by preventing grain shipments from leaving Ukraine ports, raising the spectre of shortages particularly in Africa and the Middle East.

“We are very clear that this grain crisis is urgent, that it needs to be solved within the next month. Otherwise we could see devastating consequences,” Truss said after talks with her Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.

– Russia presses gains –

On the ground in the Donbas, the situation was becoming increasingly urgent as Russian forces tightened their grip on the strategically important cities of Severodonetsk and its twin Lysychansk across the Donets river.

Taking the cities would give Moscow control of the whole of Lugansk, allowing Russia to press further into the Donbas and potentially further west.

Ukraine acknowledged Thursday that it had lost control of two areas from where it was defending the cities, with Russian forces now closer to encircling the industrial hubs.

Britain’s defence ministry said some Ukrainian units had probably been forced to withdraw “to avoid being encircled” as troops advanced slowly but steadily toward Lysychansk.

“Russia’s improved performance in this sector is likely a result of recent unit reinforcement and heavy concentration of fire,” it said in its latest intelligence update.

A representative of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine told AFP the resistance of Ukrainian forces trying to defend Lysychansk and Severodonetsk was “pointless and futile.”

“At the rate our soldiers are going, very soon the whole territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic will be liberated,” said Andrei Marochko, a spokesman for the army of Lugansk.

The Russian army also said Thursday that its bombings in the southern city of Mykolaiv had destroyed 49 fuel storage tanks and three tank repair depots, after strikes killed several Ukrainian troops Wednesday.

But Kyiv, which is urging allies to send heavier weaponry, welcomed Thursday the delivery of high-precision Himars rocket artillery from the US.

“Himars have arrived to Ukraine… Summer will be hot for Russian occupiers. And the last one for some of them,” Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov wrote on Twitter.

– ‘Only grannies left’ –

After being pushed back from Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine in the initial weeks of the invasion launched on February 24, Moscow is seeking to seize a vast eastern swathe of the country.

But daily bombardments also continue elsewhere.

The northeastern city of Kharkiv near the Russian border was near empty on Wednesday, AFP reporters said, a day after shelling by Moscow’s forces killed five people there.

“Last night the building next to mine collapsed from the bombardment while I was sleeping,” said Leyla Shoydhry, a young woman in a park near the opera house.

Roman Pohuliay, a 19-year-old in a pink sweatshirt, said most residents had fled the city.

“Only the grannies are left,” he said.

In the central city of Zaporizhzhia, meanwhile, women were training to use Kalashnikov assault rifles in urban combat as Russian forces edged nearer.

“When you can do something, it’s not so scary to take a machine gun in your hands,” said Ulyana Kiyashko, 29, after moving through an improvised combat zone in a basement.

– Lithuania in cross-hairs –

Away from the battlefield, Moscow this week summoned Brussels’ ambassador in a dispute with EU member Lithuania over the country’s restrictions on rail traffic to the Russian outpost of Kaliningrad.

The coastal territory, annexed from Germany after World War II, is about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) from Moscow, and borders Lithuania and Poland but has no land border with Russia.

By blocking goods arriving from Russia, Lithuania says it is simply adhering to European Union-wide sanctions on Moscow.

The United States made clear its commitment to Lithuania as a NATO ally, while Germany urged Russia not to “violate international law” by retaliating.

burs-sr/js/jh/gw

The head of Tunisia’s powerful UGTT trade union on Thursday rejected International Monetary Fund conditions for a new loan to bail out the country’s struggling economy and questioned the government’s authority to negotiate.

Noureddine Taboubi’s comment came a day after an IMF official said the global lender is ready to begin formal talks on a new financial aid package for Tunisia.

“We reject the conditions set by the IMF, given Tunisians’ low salaries, lack of means, rising poverty and unemployment,” Taboubi told reporters, a week after the UGTT staged a nation-wide public sector strike that saw flights cancelled, public transport halted and government offices closed.

The North African country, already heavily indebted and reeling from price hikes on imports like oil and wheat since Russia invaded Ukraine, is angling for a two billion-euro loan, according to a source with knowledge of preliminary talks.

The global lender has conditioned such a bailout on “ambitious reforms” to rein in public spending and reform Tunisia’s state-owned companies.

But on Thursday Taboubi rejected “the painful options they’re talking about”.

“We support reforms, but we don’t share the vision of reforms supported by this government,” he said.

The IMF’s regional chief Jihad Azour said Wednesday that the fund was set to begin formal talks on a new financial aid package “in the coming weeks”. 

Economic fallout from the Ukraine war made it ever more pressing, he said.

Tunisia “needs to urgently tackle its fiscal imbalances” including by “containing the large civil service wage bill, replacing generalized subsidies with transfers targeting the poor”, said Azour, a Lebanese economist and former minister.

He also urged it to open up its economy to private sector investment and “(reform) its loss-making state-owned enterprises”.

The UGTT has demanded guarantees that publicly owned firms will remain state property.

– Casting doubt –

During a visit to Tunisia this week, Azour met officials including President Kais Saied, and welcomed government plans to start tackling dire economic issues.

In Wednesday’s statement, he urged the government to discuss proposed reforms “with all stakeholders”, echoing previous comments by IMF officials indicating that UGTT consent was vital for a bailout deal.

Saied told Azour, during a meeting on Tuesday, that he “recognised the need to introduce major reforms” but insisted that such changes must “take social impacts into account”, according to a statement from the president’s office.

Taboubi cast doubt on the government’s mandate to negotiate a deal at all.

“This government was appointed temporarily, by decree,” he said.

“When there is a government produced by institutions and elections, it will have the legitimacy to start negotiations over reforms.”

Saied in July last year sacked the previous administration and suspended parliament in moves opponents have called a coup against the only democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings more than a decade ago.

The UGTT initially backed Saied’s moves but has become increasingly critical as Saied extended his power grab.

It has also turned down calls to take part in Saied’s “national dialogue” on the grounds that it excludes other key actors including political parties and much of civil society.

The union is not the president’s only domestic headache.

Judges across the country began a strike on June 6 to protest Saied’s sacking of 57 of their colleagues and what they called his “continued interference in the judiciary”.

Saied had in February scrapped an independent judicial watchdog and replaced it with a body under his own control, a move critics decried as his latest blow to democracy.

On Thursday, dozens of judges demonstrated outside the main courthouse in Tunis to demand their colleagues be reinstated.

Some held up placards demanding an end to “decree-laws and the destruction of the rule of law”.

A French court on Thursday convicted eight men for the theft and handling of a Banksy painting paying homage to the victims of the 2015 attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.

Three men in their 30s who admitted to the 2019 theft were given prison sentences, one of four years and two of three, although they will be able to serve them wearing electronic tracking bracelets rather than behind bars.

Another man, a 41-year-old millionaire lottery winner and street art fan accused of being the mastermind of the heist, was given three years in jail for handling stolen goods after judges found the main allegation unproven. His sentence will also be served with a bracelet.

Elsewhere in the capital, the defence was making its final arguments in the trial of the surviving suspects in the 2015 Paris attacks themselves, with a verdict expected on June 29.

– ‘Acted like vultures’ –

British street artist Banksy painted his “sad girl” stencil on the metal door of the Bataclan in memory of the 90 people killed there on 13 November 2015.

A white van with concealed numberplates was seen stopping on January 26, 2019 in an alleyway running alongside the central Paris music venue.

Many concertgoers fled via the same alley when the Bataclan became the focal point of France’s worst ever attacks since World War II, as Islamic State group jihadists killed 130 people at a string of sites across the capital.

On the morning of the theft, three masked men climbed out of the van, cut the hinges with angle grinders powered by a generator and left within 10 minutes, in what an investigating judge called a “meticulously prepared” heist.

Prosecutor Valerie Cadignan told the court earlier this month that the perpetrators had not sought to debase the memory of the attack victims, but “being aware of the priceless value of the door were looking to make a profit”.

She said the thieves “acted like vultures, like people who steal objects without any respect for what they might represent”.

During the trial, Bataclan staff said the theft sparked “deep indignation”, adding that the painted door was a “symbol of remembrance that belongs to everyone, locals, Parisians, citizens of the world”.

Investigators pieced together the door’s route across France and into Italy, where it was found in June 2020 on a farm in Sant’Omero, near the Adriatic coast.

Three men involved in transporting the door were each jailed for 10 months, while a 58-year-old Italian man who owns a hotel where it was temporarily stored received a six-month suspended sentence.

EU leaders met on Thursday to discuss Ukraine’s bid to join the bloc, even as tensions between Brussels and Moscow deepened over gas and Russia closed in on key cities in the embattled Donbas.

“This is a decisive moment for the European Union… A choice must be made today that will determine the future of the union, our stability, our security and our prosperity,” EU council president Charles Michel told journalists ahead of the talks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he conducted a “telephone marathon” ahead of the meeting, and approval is likely even though actual membership in the bloc remains years away.

“We are waiting for the green light, Ukraine has earned candidate status,” the head of the Ukrainian presidency Andriy Yermak said on Telegram.

But the potential consequences for Ukraine’s allies loomed large over the talks, and ahead of the G7 and NATO meetings in the following days.

Western officials denounced Moscow’s “weaponising” of its key gas and grain exports in the conflict, with a US official warning of further retaliatory measures at the G7 summit in Germany starting Sunday.

Germany ratcheted up an emergency gas plan to its second alert level, just one short of the maximum that could require rationing in Europe’s largest economy after Russia slashed its supplies.

“Gas is now a scarce commodity,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters, urging households to cut back on use.

A Kremlin spokesman called Berlin’s statements “strange,” insisting that the supply cut was to carry out maintenance and that necessary equipment from abroad had not arrived.

In Ankara meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “weaponising hunger” by preventing grain shipments from leaving Ukraine ports, raising the spectre of shortages worldwide.

“We are very clear that this grain crisis is urgent, that it needs to be solved within the next month. Otherwise we could see devastating consequences,” Truss said after talks with her Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Moscow and Ankara have negotiated for weeks on getting millions of tonnes of desperately needed grain out of the war zone and on to Africa and the Middle East, so far to no avail.

– Russia presses gains –

On the ground in the Donbas, the situation was becoming increasingly urgent as Russian forces tightened their grip on the strategically important cities of Severodonetsk and twin Lysychansk across the Donets river.

Taking the two cities would give Moscow control of the whole of Lugansk, allowing Russia to press further into Donbas and potentially farther west.

Ukraine acknowledged Thursday that it had lost control of two areas from where it was defending the cities, with Russian forces now closer to encircling the industrial hubs.

Britain’s defence ministry said some Ukrainian units had probably been forced to withdraw “to avoid being encircled” as troops advanced slowly but steadily toward Lysychansk.

“Russia’s improved performance in this sector is likely a result of recent unit reinforcement and heavy concentration of fire,” it said in its latest intelligence update.

A representative of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine told AFP the resistance of Ukrainian forces trying to defend Lysychansk and Severodonetsk was “pointless and futile.”

“At the rate our soldiers are going, very soon the whole territory of the Lugansk People’s Republic will be liberated,” said Andrei Marochko, a spokesman for the army of Lugansk.

– ‘Only grannies left’ –

After being pushed back from Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine in the initial weeks of the invasion launched on February 24, Moscow is seeking to seize a vast eastern swathe of the country.

But daily bombardments also continue elsewhere.

The northeastern city of Kharkiv near the Russian border was near empty on Wednesday, AFP reporters said, a day after shelling by Moscow’s forces killed five people there.

“Last night the building next to mine collapsed from the bombardment while I was sleeping,” said Leyla Shoydhry, a young woman in a park near the opera house.

Roman Pohuliay, a 19-year-old in a pink sweatshirt, said most residents had fled the city.

“Only the grannies are left,” he said.

Zelensky again pressed allies Wednesday for the rapid supply of more arms, having earlier accused the Russian army of “brutal and cynical” shelling in the eastern Kharkiv region, where the governor said 15 people had been killed in a day.

In the central city of Zaporizhzhia, meanwhile, women were training to use Kalashnikov assault rifles in urban combat as Russian forces edged nearer.

“When you can do something, it’s not so scary to take a machine gun in your hands,” said Ulyana Kiyashko, 29, after moving through an improvised combat zone in a basement.

– Lithuania in cross-hairs –

Away from the battlefield, Moscow this week summoned Brussels’ ambassador in a dispute with EU member Lithuania over the country’s restrictions on rail traffic to the Russian outpost of Kaliningrad.

The coastal territory, annexed from Germany after World War II, is about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) from Moscow, and borders Lithuania and Poland but has no land border with Russia.

By blocking goods arriving from Russia, Lithuania says it is simply adhering to European Union-wide sanctions on Moscow.

The United States made clear its commitment to Lithuania as a NATO ally, while Germany urged Russia not to “violate international law” by retaliating.

burs-sr/js/ech/gw