32 2GM Wednesday May 25 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
The leaders of Australia, India, Japan
and America have warned China to
cease its “militarisation” of Asian
waters as Beijing prepares to send its
foreign minister to the Solomon Islands
to cement a security agreement.
Wang Yi will travel on Thursday to
the strategically placed south Pacific
nation, which has caused alarm by
striking a deal that will allow Chinese
troops on its territory. Western coun-
tries and their Asian allies are troubled
by China’s growing military assertive-
ness in the region, which has included
building military bases on disputed is-
lets in the South China Sea and claim-
ing islands controlled by Japan.
“We strongly oppose any coercive,
The students and teachers at Robb
Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas,
were counting down to the final day of
term this week, ready to celebrate the
end of another academic year.
Instead their small community about
85 miles west of San Antonio stands to
be added to the horrifically long list of
American towns and cities indelibly
linked to tragedy.
An 18-year-old gunman, named by
Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, as
Salvador Ramos, attacked the school
shortly before midday yesterday,
leaving 14 students and one teacher
dead.
The suspect, who police said is
believed to have acted alone, was also
killed in the shooting, the latest gun
atrocity to convulse a country that has
almost unfettered access to firearms.
Abbott said the gunman was armed
with a handgun and possibly a rifle and
entered Robb Elementary School after
abandoning his car. “He shot and killed
horrifically, incomprehensibly, 14
students and killed a teacher,” Abbott
said.
“It is being reported that the subject
shot his grandmother right before he
went into the school,” he added. “I have
no further information about the con-
nection between those two shootings.”
Ramos is said to have been a pupil at
Uvalde High School. Robb Elementary
School serves more than 500 students
— typically children aged seven to ten.
The governor said the gunman lived
in the area and was probably killed by
police officers responding to the shoot-
ing, but the events were still being in-
vestigated. Two of those officers were
struck by gunfire, although the gover-
nor said their injuries were not serious.
In a statement shared on social me-
dia, Abbott said: “Texans across the
state are grieving for the victims of this
senseless crime and for the community
of Uvalde.”
He added: “We thank the courageous
first responders who worked to finally
secure Robb Elementary School. I have
instructed the Texas Department of
Public Safety and the Texas Rangers to
work with local law enforcement to
fully investigate this crime.
“The Texas Division of Emergency
Management is charged with providing
local officials with all resources neces-
sary to respond to this tragedy, as the
state of Texas works to ensure the com-
munity has what it needs to heal.”
Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde Consoli-
dated Independent School District
chief of police, said the shooting started
at 11.32am. He confirmed there were
“several injuries” of adults and stu-
dents, including some who had died.
“The suspect is deceased,” Arredon-do said, “and is believed to have acted
alone.” The chief of police added: “We
want to keep all of our families in our
prayers... we also want to respect the
privacy of the families. The crime scene
is still being worked on.”
The shooting in Texas took place less
than two weeks after an avowed white
supremacist gunman opened fire at a
supermarket in Buffalo, New York, kill-
ing ten black shoppers and workers.
That atrocity reignited the fierce debatesurrounding gun control in America.
President Biden is aware of the inci-
dent in Texas and will address the
nation, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White
House press secretary, said.
She tweeted: “President Biden has
been briefed on the horrific news of the
elementary school shooting in Texas
and will continue to be briefed regularly
as information becomes available.
“His prayers are with the families im-
pacted by this awful event, and he willspeak this evening.” Biden ordered that
the United States flag be flown at half-
mast at the White House and at all
public buildings and grounds.
Chris Murphy, a Democrat from
Connecticut, delivered an emotive
speech from the floor of the Senate and
said: “We have another Sandy Hook on
our hands.”
A gunman killed 26 people — includ-
ing 20 children — at Sandy Hook Ele-
mentary School in Connecticut in De-Students were
taken from Robb
Elementary
School in Uvalde
to a civic centre,
after the attack
by Salvador
Ramos, who was
filmed, above.
Ramos, 18, was
killed in the
incident, which
was attended by
armed police.
Ramos had shot
his grandmother
before leaving
his car and killing
14 pupils and a
teacher, Greg
Abbott, the Texas
governor, saidA group of officials gathered on a cor-
ner just off Times Square, by a stainless-
steel phone booth that looked suspi-
ciously free of graffiti.
They had come to bid farewell to the
last public phone booth on the streets of
New York, which was being ceremoni-
ously removed with misty-eyed lamen-
tations about the end of an era.
After speeches about the march of
progress, the booth was hoisted on to a
lorry to be taken to a museum, where it
will star in an exhibition on how New
Yorkers lived before mobile phones.
Matthew Fraser, the city’s commis-
sioner for technology and innovation,
described the moment as “bittersweet,
because of the prominent place they
have held in the city’s landscape for
decades”. But, just as horses and car-Allies flex muscles over Chinese militarisation
provocative or unilateral actions that
seek to change the status quo and in-
crease tensions in the area, such as the
militarisation of disputed features, the
dangerous use of coastguard vessels and
maritime militia, and efforts to disrupt
other countries’ offshore resource ex-
ploitation activities,” said the statement
signed by President Biden and the prime
ministers of India, Japan and Australia.
The statement, which named no
countries, also took aim at Russia: “The
centrepiece of the international order is
international law, including the UN
charter, respect for sovereignty and
territorial integrity of all states... All
countries must seek peaceful resolu-
tion of disputes in accordance with
international law.”
The members of the Quadrilateral
Security Dialogue, or Quad, have been
meeting bi-monthly since 2017, a reflec-tion of increasing anxiety over North
Korea’s nuclear programme, the rise of
China and the prospect of a superpower
conflict if Beijing were to invade
Taiwan. To some the assembly of the
four great Asia-Pacific democracies is
reassuring at a time when freedom of
navigation on the high seas is in jeop-
ardy. To others it is a provocation.
“To have ‘a small circle’ and to incite
bloc confrontation is an act that truly
threatens the building of a peaceful,
stable and co-operative order at sea,”
Wang Wenbin, the Chinese foreign
ministry spokesman, said in response
to the Quad statement.
“We urge the US to listen to a popular
Chinese song. ‘There’s fine wine if
friends come, but if the wolves come,
they will be greeted with shotguns.’ ”
Australia had a confrontational rela-
tionship with Beijing under its formerprime minister, Scott Morrison. The
Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, sent a let-
ter of congratulations to Anthony Al-
banese, who ousted Morrison in Sun-
day’s election, saying: “China stands
ready to work with Australia to learn
from the past, look to the future and
push forward the sound and stable de-
velopment of a bilateral comprehensive
strategic partnership.”
The response from Albanese was
cool: “It is China that has placed sanc-
tions on Australia,” he said. “There is no
justification for doing that.”
As he left Australia for Tokyo yester-
day, Albanese said he expected the re-
lationship with China to remain “diffi-
cult” but suggested his government
would take a less bullish line in dealings
with Australia’s biggest trading partner.
Xi’s bromance with Putin backfires,
Roger Boyes, page 28Richard Lloyd Parry To k y o
Bernard Lagan Sydney
Didi Tang Beijing
Don’t call us...
Will Pavia New York‘Another Sandy Hook’: America
United States
Keiran Southern Los Angeles Analysis
A
merica was
scarred by the
horrific mass
shooting at
Sandy Hook
Elementary School in
Connecticut that killed
20 five and six year-olds
and six staff in 2012
(David Charter writes).
Joe Biden, vice-
president at the time,
called it “one of the
saddest days we were in
office those eight years”
and championed
attempts to tighten gun
control.
Yet the legislative
measures that reached
the Senate — one to ban
certain weapons and
large magazines; another
to require criminal
background checks for
firearm sales online and
at gun shows — were
defeated.
It was a pattern
repeated in 2018 after a
gunman walked into a
school in Parkland,
Florida, and shot and
killed 17 pupils and staff.
A bill requiring
background checks for
commercial and private
firearm sales passed the
House but did not get a
vote in the Senate.
President Trump had
said he would veto it if it
passed.The Sandy Hook
Promise group says that
every day in America 12
children die from gun
violence and 32 are shot
and injured.
Campaigners for
restrictions could be
forgiven their despair.
Biden has faced his
own reversals, having led
as a senator in 1994 a
law to ban assault
weapons and large-
capacity magazines,
which took out of use
about 1.5 million
weapons and 25 million
magazines owned by
Americans — but ended
in 2004 when President
George W Bush let it
lapse.
Biden addressed
bereaved families in
December on the ninth
anniversary of Sandy
Hook, saying legislation
was long overdue and
that “as a nation, we owe
these families more than
prayers. We owe them
action.”
While there is a public
consensus in the US for
stricter laws, it is a
narrow one. Gallup
found 52 per cent
support for stricter gun
control last year, the
lowest recorded since- It coincided with
record sales of guns.