Wall Street Journal 08_04_2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Wednesday, April 8, 2020 |A

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

High Court on Tuesday to

quash his conviction brings

this case to a close. But in the

court of public opinion, from

church officials to government

leaders and victims’ advocates,

people remain bitterly divided.

For his detractors, Cardinal

Pell is a symbol of the abuse

crisis. To his supporters, he is

a scapegoat who was targeted

by enemies of the church.

He served more than 12

months of a six-year prison

sentence after a jury found him

guilty of assaulting two 13-year-

old choirboys in a Melbourne

cathedral while he was the

city’s archbishop in the 1990s.

On Tuesday, Cardinal Pell

said he had been vindicated

after years of legal battles.

“I have consistently main-

tained my innocence while

suffering from a serious injus-

tice,” he said.

The 78-year-old cardinal

left prison on Tuesday.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge,

president of the Australian

Catholic Bishops Conference,

noted that the “outcome will

be welcomed by many, includ-

ing those who have believed in

the Cardinal’s innocence,” but

“will be devastating for oth-

ers. Many have suffered

greatly through the process.”

Archbishop Anthony Fisher

of Sydney was more forceful

with his support: “I am pleased

that the Cardinal will now be

released and I ask that the

pursuit of him that brought us

to this point now cease.”

Daniel Andrews, the pre-

mier of Victoria, the state

where Cardinal Pell was con-

victed, released an unusual

statement Tuesday in which

he made no comment on the

High Court decision, but sent a

message to victims and survi-

vors of child sex abuse: “I see

you. I hear you. I believe you.”

Pope Francis had reserved

judgment on the Pell case, but

he made a possible allusion to

the case Tuesday morning.

“In these days of #Lent,

we’ve been witnessing the

persecution that Jesus under-

went and how He was judged

ferociously, even though He

was innocent. Let us #PrayTo-

gether today for all those per-

sons who suffer due to an un-

just sentence because of [sic]

someone had it in for them,”

the pope wrote on Twitter.

The Vatican later released a

statement welcoming the deci-

sion, adding that Cardinal Pell

“has always maintained his in-

nocence, and has waited for

the truth to be ascertained.”

The seven High Court

judges concluded unanimously

that the case wasn’t proved

beyond reasonable doubt.

His accuser, one of the for-

mer choirboys, said he re-

spected the High Court deci-

sion but said it highlighted the

difficulties in child sexual

abuse cases.

“I understand why criminal

cases must be proven beyond

all reasonable doubt,” he said

in a statement early Wednes-

day. “But the price we pay for

weighting the system in favor

of the accused is that many

sexual offenses against chil-

dren go unpunished.”

The reversal of Cardinal
George Pell’s conviction on
child sex-abuse charges gener-
ated support and anger in
Australia and around the
world and left leaders of the
Catholic Church in a difficult
position as they continue to
deal with a prolonged crisis
over clerical wrongdoing.
Cardinal Pell, a former Vati-
can finance chief, is the most
senior Catholic cleric to be
tried on charges of sexually
abusing children. The unani-
mous decision by Australia’s

BYFRANCISX.ROCCA
ANDRACHELPANNETT

Church Celebrates Pell’s Release, but Critics Protest

WORLD WATCH

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban Break Off

Talks With Kabul

The Taliban broke off talks
with the Afghan government,
creating a fresh stumbling block
for the peace process weeks af-
ter U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo’s visit to Afghanistan.
The talks among Afghan and
Taliban negotiators aimed to fi-
nalize the terms of a prisoner
swap, which is necessary for a
peace process to begin under
the terms of the U.S. deal with
the Taliban.
While the Afghan govern-
ment isn’t a signatory to the
U.S. deal, it has agreed to the
swap. Progress has been ham-
pered by a feud among Afghan
leaders over the outcome of last
year’s presidential election.
Both sides on Tuesday ac-
cused the other of negotiating in
poor faith after the talks were
suspended. Taliban spokesman
Suhail Shaheen tweeted that
the group had recalled its nego-
tiating team from Kabul. The
team had been in the Afghan

capital since the start of April.

Afghanistan’s National Secu-

rity Council said the Taliban’s

withdrawal showed a lack of se-

riousness about peace.

Mr. Pompeo insisted that the

process was broadly on track

earlier on Tuesday. He traveled

to Kabul on a rescue mission in

late March to push leaders to

set aside their rivalries.

“I am confident in the days

ahead we’ll have things that look

like steps backward, but I’m also

hopeful that all the parties are

sincere in wanting what’s good

for the Afghan people,” he said.

—Ehsanullah Amiri

MEXICO

Inflation Eases as

Gasoline Prices Fall

Mexican inflation eased in

March as gasoline prices fell in

line with the drop in world oil

prices, offsetting higher costs of

produce and other goods.

The consumer-price index fell

0.05% from February, and the

annual inflation rate slowed to

3.25% from 3.7%, the National

Statistics Institute reported on

Tuesday.

Energy costs were down

4.17% from February after the

collapse in world oil prices led to

cheaper gasoline, while prices of

fruits, vegetables and other pro-

duce rose 1.3%.

Core CPI, which excludes en-

ergy and agricultural products,

rose 0.29% in March for an an-

nual rate of 3.6%.

While the coronavirus pan-

demic has led to expectations

that the Mexican economy will

fall into recession in 2020, little

impact is expected on consumer

prices despite the Mexican cur-

rency recently hitting a low

against the U.S. dollar.

Banks polled last week by

Citibanamex estimated that

gross domestic product will con-

tract 5% in 2020, and that infla-

tion will end the year at 3.5%,

close to the central bank’s 3%

target.

—Anthony Harrup

BANGLADESH

Fugitive Killer Held

In 1975 Assassination

Bangladesh police arrested a

fugitive killer of the country’s in-

dependence leader Sheikh Mu-

jibur Rahman on Tuesday, nearly

45 years after the brutal assas-

sination, an official said.

Abdul Majed, a former mili-

tary captain, was arrested in the

capital, Dhaka, Home Minister

Asaduzzaman Khan said.

Mr. Majed had publicly an-

nounced his involvement after

the killing and had reportedly

been hiding in India for many

years. He is one of a dozen de-

fendants sentenced to death in

1998 for their involvement in the

1975 killing of Mr. Rahman and

most of his family members by

a group of army officials.

Mr. Rahman was the father

of current Prime Minister Sheikh

Hasina. She and her younger sis-

ter were the only survivors in

the family, as they were visiting

Germany during the assassina-

tion.

—Associated Press

FEAST DAY: A Russian Orthodox Christian marked the Annunciation in Kineshma, Russia, on Tuesday.

VLADIMIR SMIRNOV/TASS/ZUMA PRESS

Authorities and aid agencies

are racing to increase isolation

and treatment capacity in the

district where the camps are

located, which is home to 2.

million residents in addition to

the refugees. Hospitals run by

the government and aid organ-

izations aim to prepare 1,

beds, from fewer than 1,000 in

the district. They plan to pre-

pare 10 intensive-care units

with ventilators at a hospital

in the city of Cox’s Bazar.

Health facilities in and

around the refugee camps

don’t yet have a lab outfitted

for coronavirus testing or the

chemical reagents needed to

conduct them. A lab run by

the country’s disease-control

institute has just come online

in the district but has “limited

capacity,” said the U.N.

A Bangladeshi woman in

Cox’s Bazar recently tested

positive—her sample sent to

the capital, Dhaka, for pro-

cessing—bringing the infec-

tion to the refugees’ doorstep.

“We don’t know how far

this will spread, but if it does

there is little capacity to test

and isolate,” said Sabrina De-

nuncq, of the International

Committee of the Red Cross.

“We’re watching and waiting

with our fingers crossed.”

—Joe Parkinson

contributed to this article.

they still receive the same

amount of basic items and

food, they now must collect it

all at once and make it last—

sparking fears of shortages.

Makeshift markets in the

camps, where refugees could

buy fresh food to supplement

their rations, have closed.

“Day and night I’m think-

ing, ‘When will it be better?’ ”

Ms. Begom said.

Every day, volunteers who

live in the camp go door-to-

door to raise awareness about

hygiene and quell rumors.

Monthslong internet curbs

are limiting public access to in-

formation. Bangladesh ordered

internet providers to cut off 3G

and 4G service in the camps in

September, and began enforc-

ing a ban on SIM cards, largely

citing security reasons.

“We’re trying, but we can-

not go to every home,” said

Khin Maung, founder of the

Rohingya Youth Association, a

civil society group. “We ask

[Bangladesh] to please open up

the network right now, we’re

trying to save people’s lives.”

Bangladesh, with 165 mil-

lion people in one of the most

densely populated countries,

had confirmed 164 cases and

17 deaths as of Tuesday.

Health workers worry limited

testing may be concealing a

larger outbreak.

eries of critical aid. Some na-

tions are making exceptions for

humanitarian aid or emergency

flights, but the national re-

sponses have been uneven.

In the Bangladesh camps,

where people live on bare-mini-

mum provisions, locking out the

virus will be difficult. Access to

the area has been reduced to

limit the risk of contamination.

“We certainly don’t want to

be the ones who bring the ill-

ness in,” said Gemma Snow-

don, a spokeswoman for the

U.N.’s World Food Program.

The U.N. and aid agencies

have limited their services in

the camps to essentials such

as food and emergency medi-

cal care. Programs that train

refugees in occupational skills

have been suspended.

Food is now distributed to

residents in the Bangladesh

camps once a month, whereas

refugees used to be able to pick

up their rations incrementally

when they needed them. While

used elsewhere such as social

distancing and testing would be

either impossible or ineffective

in unsanitary, crowded camps.

Researchers at Johns Hop-

kins Center for Humanitarian

Health, modeling possible out-

comes, found that a single in-

troduction of the coronavirus

into the camps in Bangladesh

likely would lead to a large-

scale outbreak—and between

1,647 and 2,109 deaths.

The number of people dis-

placed by conflict and perse-

cution around the world is at a

high of more than 70 million,

according to the United Na-

tions refugee agency.

In Africa, more than 6 mil-

lion refugees and almost 18

million internally displaced

people live in camps across

more than a dozen countries,

according to advocacy group

Refugees International.

In South Sudan, aid agen-

cies say it can take days for

those among the more than 1.

million internally displaced

people to reach the most basic

health-care facilities. Leading

causes of death often are

treatable diseases such as ma-

laria and diarrhea.

Some aid agencies have said

lockdowns in Africa, with more

than half of the continent’s 54

countries closing air, land and

sea borders, are delaying deliv-

BYFELIZSOLOMON

Refugee Camps Face Heightened Peril

Rohingya refugees at a market area in a Bangladesh camp last month. In the camps, people live on bare-minimum provisions and social distancing is impossible.

SUZAUDDIN RUBEL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A single coronavirus

case in Bangladesh

likely would lead to

a major outbreak.

The U.S. plans to block
Iran’s requested $5 billion
emergency loan from the In-
ternational Monetary Fund
that Tehran says it needs to
fight its coronavirus crisis.

Senior officials in the
Trump administration said
Iran’s government has billion-
dollar accounts still at its dis-
posal. If allowed to tap IMF fi-
nancing, the officials said,
Tehran would then be able to
divert those or other funds to
help its economy, which has
been weakened by U.S. sanc-
tions, or finance militants in
the Middle East, rather than
on containing the pandemic.
Iranian “officials have a long
history of diverting funds allo-
cated for humanitarian goods
into their own pockets and to
their terrorist proxies,” one of
the administration officials said.
The IMF, which is facing ur-
gent funding requests from
scores of governments, said it
is in talks with Tehran to de-
termine its eligibility for an
emergency loan.
The pandemic has torn
through Iran, one of the worst-
affected countries, and jolted
an economy already reeling
from the Trump administration
sanctions under its “maximum
pressure campaign.” Despite
calls from some humanitarian
groups and other nations to
ease the sanctions, the adminis-
tration has said it won’t relent.
Iran’s representative at the
United Nations didn’t respond
to a request for comment on
the U.S. decision on IMF fund-
ing. Iranian officials have
called the U.S. sanctions amid
the pandemic “medical terror-
ism” and said U.S. offers of
humanitarian assistance to
help fight the coronavirus are
“deceptions and lies.”
As the IMF’s largest share-
holder, the U.S. largely deter-
mines the fate of bailout re-
quests, though technically IMF
member countries could amass
a majority of votes to approve
Iran’s loan.

ByIan Talleyin

Washington andBenoit

Fauconin London

U.S. Plans

To Block

IMF Loan

For Iran

Jamila Begom and six of

her relatives share a small

bamboo-and-tarpaulin hut in a

Bangladesh settlement that is

now home to nearly a million

Rohingya refugees from Myan-

mar. Structures in her camp—

one of 34 in the settlement—

are so close together she can

hear her neighbors whisper.

Ms. Begom has tried not to

leave the shelter since March

26, when Bangladesh declared

a nationwide lockdown to slow

the spread of the new coronavi-

rus. But with no running water,

the 30-year-old must go out to

use the latrine that she shares

with about 20 others, and to

bathe, wash clothes and fetch

drinking water from wells.

It is an advantageous envi-

ronment for a virus.

“If just one person is infected

there, I can’t even imagine,”

said Razia Sultana, a lawyer and

activist in Bangladesh working

with Rohingya refugees, most of

whom fled a military crackdown

in Myanmar in 2017.

For millions of people living

in camps for refugees and other

displaced people world-wide,

slowing the spread of the coro-

navirus might not be an option.

The contagion must be stopped

before it breaches their enclo-

sures. Containment measures

WORLD NEWS

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