World

The European Union added its voice Monday to calls for calm after nearly two weeks of protests prompted by the ouster of leftist ex-president Pedro Castillo.

Security officials say 21 people have died in clashes since Castillo was abruptly removed from power and arrested early this month after seeking to dissolve Congress to rule by decree.

His impeachment and detention drew criticism from leftist Latin American allies including Mexico, as well as from thousands of supporters who took to the streets to demand his release.

A subsequent security clampdown, including the deployment of armed soldiers during a state of emergency declared under Castillo’s successor Dina Boluarte, has killed several protesters.

“The EU condemns any use of violence and any excessive use of force,” the bloc said in a statement Monday.

It expressed concern about “reports that more than two dozen civilians have been killed so far, some of them by firearms, and many more injured during recent protests.”

The EU called for a “spirit of dialogue and cooperation to stop violence.”

In addition to the deaths, the repression of demonstrations has also left 646 people injured, including 290 policemen, according to the office of Peru’s human rights ombudsman.

On Sunday, the US State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spoken to Boluarte, urging the new president to pursue reforms and “focus on reconciliation.”

Castillo, a former rural school teacher and union leader, unexpectedly took power from Peru’s traditional political elite in elections last year.

He immediately came under fire, surviving two early impeachment bids, and soon also found himself in the cross-hairs of prosecutors looking into numerous graft claims.

He is the subject of six separate criminal investigations.

Castillo’s short term was plagued by instability, with three prime ministers and seven interior ministers coming and going in just over a year.

Opinion polls revealed massive public disapproval of Castillo’s management of the country, but thousands nevertheless spilled onto the streets when he was arrested.

– ‘Criminal organization’ –

By Monday, the protests appeared to be waning, with smaller groups gathered calmly in several parts of the country, waving signs denouncing Boluarte as a “killer” and demanding her resignation.

They also want elections scheduled for 2026 to be brought forward to next year — a measure that lawmakers will consider this week.

Demonstrations have shaken the country since Castillo’s impeachment on December 7, with roadblocks and airport disruptions and thousands of tourists left stranded.

Operations at the airport of Arequipa, Peru’s second busiest, resumed Monday after a week of closure due to protesters obstructing the runway with stones, sticks and burning tires.

Neighbor Chile announced, meanwhile, that a chartered plane would evacuate stranded visitors to the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu to Lima.

Castillo is being held in pre-trial detention on charges of rebellion and conspiracy. 

Boluarte, who was Castillo’s vice president and took over after he was impeached, said Sunday that Mexico had offered asylum to Castillo’s graft-accused family. 

Speaking on the Panorama TV program, she did not specify whether the family members — Castillo’s wife, two children and sister-in-law — have left the country.

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and fellow leftist leaders of Bolivia, Argentina and Colombia have all expressed support for Castillo.

Prosecutors have accused Castillo’s wife, Lilia Paredes, of criminal conspiracy and money laundering as part of an alleged graft network headed by her husband.

The “criminal organization” Castillo stands accused of running is alleged to have handed out public contracts in exchange for kickbacks.

Paredes’s sister Yenifer is also accused in the alleged plot.

The country is no stranger to instability: it had three different presidents in five days in 2020, and now six presidents since 2016.

Six of Peru’s last seven presidents were investigated or prosecuted after their terms came to an end.

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Labourer Rasool Badshah has moved into a new home six months after a deadly earthquake rocked eastern Afghanistan, but without his mother, who was killed by collapsing walls.

More than 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands made homeless after the 5.9-magnitude quake — the deadliest in Afghanistan in nearly a quarter of a century — struck the impoverished province of Paktika on June 22.

“When I reached here, my mother, brothers, everyone was already buried,” Badshah, 21, told AFP, explaining how he rushed back to his village from Pakistan, where he was working.

Hundreds of earthquake-resilient concrete homes, many built by local labourers with the support of the United Nations refugee agency, have now been handed over to survivors who were until now living in makeshift tent cities.

“We couldn’t have built these houses, not even our children or grandchildren (could have)… we could not afford it. We were living in huts,” Badshah said.

The UNHCR said the new homes are equipped with solar panels, independent toilets and traditional heaters to help residents face harsh winters.

Even before the earthquake, Afghanistan was in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made worse by the Taliban takeover in August 2021.

International development funding on which the South Asian country relied dried up after the takeover and assets held abroad were frozen.

The remote east where the quake struck had been neglected by authorities for years, said survivor Bara Khan.

“After the earthquake, people came and saw that residents of the area were in trouble. We don’t even have a clinic or a school,” Khan said.

“Everybody has grown up illiterate.”

The UNHCR will start work to build two schools and a clinic in the area, still strewn with rubble, after the winter.

Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. 

Expectations heading into a UN biodiversity conference in Montreal were about as low as they could be. 

But a broad recognition that it was now or never for nature — and a flurry of late diplomacy by China —  helped seal a “historic” deal on a night of high drama.

Dubbed the “ugly duckling” of global policy, the COP15 negotiations were snubbed by world leaders who had just attended a far higher-profile climate summit in Egypt.

Beijing, which held the presidency of the talks, at first appeared to have a hands-off approach, and the defining issue — whether the rich world would pledge enough money so their developing counterparts could protect vanishing species and habitats — seemed too great to surmount.

“For months, there was the question: Where is China?” a high-level source close to the matter told AFP.

What’s more, relations between China and Canada, which had to step in to host the event because of China’s strict Covid rules, have deteriorated in recent years.

Canada’s 2018 arrest of Chinese telecommunications executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of the United States was followed quickly by China arresting two Canadians.

Just last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping was caught on camera scolding Canada’s Justin Trudeau over a sleight. 

What’s more, “it’s strange to have a Chinese presidency on North American soil,” said the high-level source — and early signs did nothing to dispel assumptions that China in charge would mean a weakening of ambition.

In the first week, China let Canada run the show shepherding talks on the key issues, from finance to the cornerstone target of protecting 30 percent of land and oceans by 2030.

But as the clock ticked down, it was China that took charge of the text, in an approach described as “gentle” diplomacy: having subject experts and political representatives work in a calm, even environment, according to another diplomatic source.

“China closed out the deal and cornered the developing countries with the $30 billion financing pledge by 2030,” said a third source, a European negotiator. 

When countries of the Global North sought more ambitious targets from the South, China responded by telling them they’d need to up their financing. And Beijing acted as a neutral arbiter, not aligning itself with the Group of 77 as it normally does.

“They’ve taken the risk of putting their own reputation on the line for something many thought they weren’t the natural leaders of,” said Lee White, a British-Gabonese conservationist and minister of water, forests and environment of Gabon. 

Nor is China a natural champion of environmental issues, having badly polluted its air and waters and degraded much of its land through agricultural production — a process it is trying to reverse through a greenification campaign. 

“Countries that destroy their biodiversity end up regretting it —  I think the Chinese probably got to that point and are now trying to put things right,” said White.

– High drama –

The passage of China’s compromise text wasn’t smooth sailing. 

A plenary session to ratify the text was postponed Sunday several times to accommodate last minute holdouts, though delegates were eventually asked to take their seats by around 9:00 pm, and wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. 

Some left the main hall to take naps, with several Western delegates expressing irritation that the session was not being adjourned until the next day.

It was around 3:00 am that the session finally began. A new text had been uploaded, and participants were once more buzzing at the prospect of a “peace pact for nature.” When delegates gathered in the vast plenary hall, drama struck.

A delegate from Democratic Republic of Congo refused to back the accord, demanding more funds.

The conference chair, China’s environment minister Huang Runqiu, brushed this off, declaring the deal “approved” and whacking down his gavel to loud applause. DRC’s ally Uganda branded it a “fraud” and a “coup,” but the accord passed.

An exultant Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s environment minister, downplayed the drama — insisting the process was upheld by the United Nations and disagreements on this scale were commonplace at such summits which he had been attending for 25 years.

“I’ve never seen a presidency text tabled and have so much support for it from the get-go,” with the vast majority of countries signing up right away, he enthused.

On cooperation with China, he told AFP: “We both decided to set aside our differences… to focus on what unites us,” adding: “What China and Canada have accomplished together in our relationship is symbolic of what we’ve accomplished here together, more than 196 countries.”

While China took center stage, the United States participated only in a supporting role.

President Joe Biden supports the pact’s goals and announced his own “30×30” plan domestically — but political opposition by Republicans prevents the US from signing on to the convention on biological diversity.

Lawmakers investigating last year’s assault on the US Capitol recommended Monday that Donald Trump be charged with multiple offenses including insurrection — raising the stakes in a parallel criminal investigation that could put the former president in jail.

The House of Representatives select committee called for the indictment — as well as charges of obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States — after an 18-month probe into the storming of Congress on January 6, 2021.

At least five people died after a mob whipped up by Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, and directed to march on Congress by the defeated president, ransacked the seat of US democracy in a thwarted bid to prevent the transfer of power to President Joe Biden.

The bipartisan committee voted unanimously to refer the charges to the Justice Department after opening remarks by vice-chair Liz Cheney in which she accused Trump of “a clear dereliction of duty” in failing to immediately attempt to stop the riot and called him “unfit for any office.”

“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again,” she said.

The referrals are seen as largely symbolic, as the panel has no control over charging decisions, which rest with the Justice Department.

Jack Smith, a largely independent special prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is leading his own investigation into Trump related to the 2020 election.

– Major blow –

Trump issued a statement claiming that the purpose of the investigation was to “keep me from running for president because they know I’ll win” and that any prosecution would be “a partisan attempt to sideline me.”

Trump’s approval ratings are underwater — at minus-20 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average, compared with minus-eight percent for Biden.

But the lawmakers’ move is nevertheless historic, as Congress has never made a criminal referral against a sitting or former president, and it will add to the clamor among Trump’s opponents for prosecution.

It is also a major blow to Trump amid a series of missteps in the weeks since he announced a comeback bid for the White House — including the Republicans’ poor midterm election showing in states where the tycoon endorsed candidates.

Charges could result in a ban from public office for the 76-year-old Republican, who still wields considerable power in the Republican Party, and even prison time.

“To cast a vote in the United States is an act of faith and hope,” committee chairman Bennie Thompson said.

“That faith in our system is the foundation of American democracy. If the faith is broken, so is our democracy. Donald Trump broke that faith.”

The seven Democratic and two Republican panel members are winding down their work before the end of the year, and have compiled their findings into an eight-chapter report set to be released on Wednesday. 

The committee’s case is that Trump “oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.”

– ‘Trump knew he lost’ –

Investigators say the plot began with Trump’s campaign to spread allegations he knew were false that the election was marred by widespread fraud.

He is accused of trying to corrupt the Justice Department and of pressuring his vice president Mike Pence, as well as state election officials and legislators, to overturn the vote by violating the Constitution and the law.

Trump is also accused of summoning and assembling the mob in Washington, and directing it toward the Capitol despite knowing it was armed with assault rifles, handguns and numerous other weapons. 

And for hours he ignored pleas from his team to take action to stop the violence, lawmakers say.

Democratic panel member Zoe Lofgren said Trump’s false fraud claims — far from being spontaneous — were part of a deliberate attempt to sow distrust in democracy that began long before the insurrection.

Lofgren repeated the panel’s suggestion that Trump allies had engaged in witness tampering, alleging that someone linked to the former president had offered potential employment to a witness prior to their testimony.

Lofgren said a witness was also told by a lawyer linked to Trump that she could pretend to not remember facts as she was giving evidence.

Lofgren also returned to an accusation previously leveled by the panel that Trump had “raised hundreds of millions of dollars with false representations made to his online donors.”

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Monday officially apologised for 250 years of the Netherlands’ involvement in slavery, calling it a “crime against humanity”.

The apology comes almost 150 years after the end of slavery in the European country’s overseas colonies, which included Suriname in South America, Indonesia in the east and Caribbean islands such as Curacao and Aruba.

In the first of the former Dutch colonies to react, Aruba’s Prime Minister Evelyn Wever-Croes accepted the apology, but others deplored a lack of concrete action or dialogue.

“Today on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologise for the past actions of the Dutch state,” Rutte said in a speech, repeating the apology in English, Papiamento and Sranan Tongo, languages spoken on the Caribbean islands and in Suriname.

“The Dutch State of the Netherlands… bears responsibility for the great suffering inflicted on enslaved people and their descendants,” Rutte told an audience at the National Archives in The Hague.

“We, living in the here and now, can only recognise and condemn slavery in the clearest terms as a crime against humanity,” he added.

Dutch ministers have travelled to seven former colonies in South America and the Caribbean for the event.

“I don’t see much with regard to action by the Netherlands and it’s a shame,” Iwan Wijngaarde, head of the Federation of Afro-Surinamese, told AFP after the speech.

“What was completely missing in this speech was responsibility and accountability,” Armand Zunder, president of Suriname’s national reparations commission, told AFP.

– ‘Complicated matter’ –

The Dutch government says several major commemorative events will be held from next year and has announced a 200-million-euro ($212-million) fund for social initiatives.

“We think that in time there should be a fund which is counted in terms of billions,” Zunder said.

Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Sigrid Kaag said on an official visit to Suriname last week that a “process” would begin leading up to “another incredibly important moment on July 1 next year”.

Descendants of Dutch slavery will then celebrate 150 years of liberation from slavery in an annual celebration called “Keti Koti” (Breaking the Chains) in Suriname.

But the plan has caused controversy, with groups and some of the affected countries criticising the move as rushed, and saying the lack of consultation by the Netherlands smacked of a colonial attitude.

Rutte in his speech on Monday said that choosing the right moment was a “complicated matter”. 

“There is not one right time for everyone, not one right word for everyone, not one right place for everyone,” he said.

– ‘Golden’ Age? –

The Dutch funded their “Golden Age” of empire and culture in the 16th and 17th centuries by shipping around 600,000 Africans as part of the slave trade, mostly to South America and the Caribbean.

At the height of its colonial empire, the United Provinces known today as the Netherlands possessed colonies like Suriname, the Caribbean island of Curacao, South Africa and Indonesia, where the Dutch East India Company was based in the 17th century.

In recent years, the Netherlands has been grappling with the fact that its Rembrandt and Vermeer-filled museums and historic towns were largely built on the back of that brutality.

Spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, it has also raised questions about racism in Dutch society.

Pressure has been growing at home with the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht formally apologising for the slave trade.

Rutte had long resisted, previously saying the period of slavery was too far back and that an apology would ignite tensions in a country where the far right remains strong.

He has now changed tack, but that has not pleased everyone.

– ‘A first step’ –

Sint Maarten’s Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs on Monday called it a “forced apology” but invited dialogue.

“We are not at the stage that we can either accept or reject the statements/apologies,” she said on NOS public radio.

But on Aruba, Wever-Croes told the ANP news agency the island accepted the apology, but stressed “it is a first step.”

On Monday, Dutch cabinet ministers would be in Suriname, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Aruba, Curacao, Saba and St. Eustatius to “discuss the cabinet response and its significance on location with those present” after the Rutte speech, the government said.

Slavery was formally abolished in Suriname and other Dutch-held lands on July 1, 1863, but the practice only really ended in 1873 after a 10-year “transition” period.

Slavery commemoration groups say any apology should come on the 150th anniversary of that date, in 2023, instead of the “arbitrary” date of December 19 this year.