The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-25)

A10 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 , 2022

The World

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban, UAE company

reach deal on airports

The Taliban is handing over
control of Afghanistan’s airports
to a company based in the United
Arab Emirates, according to a
statement from the prime
minister’s office on Tuesday.
A memorandum of
understanding was signed
Tuesday in Kabul “for the control
and management of the airports
in Afghanistan” by the Taliban’s
acting first deputy prime
minister, Abdul Ghani Baradar,
and Razack Aslam Mohammed
Abdur Razack o f GAAC Solutions.

The agreement covers airports in

Kabul, Kandahar and Herat.

The deal will apply only to the

logistics at the airports and not

security, which has been a

sticking point in past discussions

with potential partners to

manage the sites.

Razack said he thinks the

agreement would bring the

business community back to

Afghanistan, along with airline

companies.

Afghanistan’s main

international airport in Kabul

was ransacked in August as the

city’s security forces melted away

and Taliban fighters took control

of the capital.

— Susannah George

HONG KONG

C hurch cancels Mass

for Tiananmen victims

For the first time in three

decades, there will be no

organized memorial to the

Tiananmen Square crackdown in

Hong Kong, the last place on

Chinese territory where any kind

of commemoration was possible.

On Tuesday, the Hong Kong

Catholic Diocese said it would no

longer celebrate a memorial Mass

for the victims of the June 4, 1989,

massacre in Beijing, reflecting

how churches, along with the rest

of civil society, have been pushed

into censoring themselves. A

Beijing-written national security

law has crushed dissent in the

once-semiautonomous city.

The church’s move comes after

a candlelight vigil marking the

anniversary was banned in 2020

and 2021, with officials citing the

pandemic. The m emorial Masses,

which persisted until this year,

were the last form of organized

commemoration in the city.

The diocese told The

Washington Post that it does not

“mean to disapprove of the

memorial Mass” but that “our

front-line colleagues... are

concerned that such activity...

might violate the national

security law now in force.”

— Theodora Yu

Police raid in Rio de Janeiro

favela kills 11: Police in Rio de

Janeiro raided the Vila Cruzeiro

favela before dawn in an

operation that prompted a fierce

firefight, and state officials said

at least 11 people died. The

operation was aimed at locating

and arresting criminal leaders,

police said in a statement. It said

officers were fired upon while

preparing their incursion.

At least 11 killed in bar attacks

in Mexico: Eleven people, eight

of them women, were killed in

simultaneous shooting attacks at

two bars in central Mexico,

authorities said. Handwritten

signs left at the scenes suggested

that the attacks were part of a

rivalry between two drug cartels

that have long been battling for

control of Guanajuato state.

Pakistan bans Imran Khan’s

rally: Pakistan banned ousted

prime minister Imran Khan from

holding a rally in the capital and

cracked down on his supporters

in overnight raids, arresting

hundreds. The ban came hours

after a police officer was killed

during one of the raids, when a

supporter of Khan opened fire

after officers entered his home in

the city of Lahore. Khan was

ousted in a no-confidence vote in

Parliament in April.

— From news services

DIGEST

BY SAMANTHA SCHMIDT

cali, colombia — The stage
was ready, surrounded by a small
army of police officers, Indig-
enous guards and martial artists.
A crowd of thousands, soaking
wet from the rain, waved flags
under the dark sky as they await-
ed the candidate vying to become
Colombia’s first leftist president.
Also helping provide security
to Gustavo Petro, the front-run-
ner in the first round of the
presidential election Sunday, was
an unusual group of volunteers:
Members of Cali’s front line, pro-
testers at the epicenter of a mas-
sive nationwide uprising last
year. Now, a year after they
clashed with police, they stood
beside hundreds of officers with a
new mission: protecting the can-
didate they saw as their only
hope.
When Petro walked up, the
crowd could hardly see him. He
hid behind four men carrying
large bulletproof shields. And as
he spoke, the armor remained on
either side of him, reminding
those in the plaza of what it
means to run for office in this
South American country.
“So many people, time and

time again, have tried to change

history in Colombia,” Petro told

the crowd last week in this city

near the Pacific coast. He men-

tioned the names of leaders who

have been assassinated, includ-

ing Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a presi-

dential hopeful whose death in

1948 set off decades of violence in

the country. “Failure after failure,

for two centuries, and now we’re

on the cusp.”

Two days later, at a campaign

event in Bogotá, someone point-

ed a laser at Petro’s running mate,

Francia Márquez. Bodyguards en-

circled her and she quickly fin-

ished her speech, audibly dis-

tressed, while standing behind

their shields.

As Colombians head to the

polls, the atmosphere here is

more tense, uncertain and unsta-

ble than any election in at least a

decade. An uptick in death

threats against Petro has led the

campaign to tighten security. The

country’s rural north is still on

edge after the Clan del Golfo

cartel paralyzed more than 100

municipalities in retaliation for

the extradition of their leader to

the United States. Accusations of

electoral irregularities and a de-

cline in confidence in govern-

ment are prompting concern that

candidates on any side will claim

election fraud.

Colombia, a key U.S. ally in the

hemisphere, has long been recog-

nized for the strength of its demo-

cratic institutions, even amid a

half-century of armed conflict.

But it has never come so close to a

swing to the left — or such a

drastic rebuke of the status quo.

“It’s a test of democracy,” said

Camilo González Posso, president

of the Colombia-based Institute

for Development and Peace Stud-

ies.

If any candidate — especially a

candidate as popular as Petro —

loses by a thin margin and con-

tests the results, Colombians wor-

ry, major cities could erupt in civil

unrest.

On Saturday, Petro accused the

government of plotting to sus-

pend the May 29 elections in what

he called “a coup against the

popular vote.” Colombia’s interior

minister quickly rebutted the al-

legations and called on all candi-

dates not to spread false informa-

tion.

That’s taking a page from for-

mer president Donald Trump, a

phenomenon seen in other coun-

tries in the region. “They’re con-

spiracy theories to take away the

legitimacy of an election result,”

said Armando Novoa Garcia, a

former member of Colombia’s

electoral council.

Concerns about the electoral

system heightened after Colom-

bia’s legislative elections in

March, in which the country’s

Election Observation Mission

found “unusually large” discrep-

ancies between the pre-count and

the actual results recorded on

ballots. But Javi López, the Span-

iard who leads the European

Union’s election observation mis-

sion in Colombia, said the prob-

lems that emerged have since

been resolved.

López expressed the impor-

tance of generating confidence in

the country’s electoral system.

But he also said his team was

monitoring, with concern, the

inspector general’s recent sus-

pension of the mayor of Medellín

for his public support of Petro in

the elections. “In terms of inter-

national standards, administra-

tive organs don’t suspend elected

officials,” López said.

If none of the candidates wins

a majority in Sunday’s vote, the

top two will go to a second round

in late June. Polls show Petro, a

62-year-old senator and former

guerrilla member, in the lead.

In recent weeks, it seemed

almost certain that Petro would

head to a second round with

Federico Gutiérrez, the center-

right former mayor of Medellín

who sought to capture the votes

of the political establishment. But

recent polling shows a late surge

for an outsider candidate who has

drawn comparisons to Trump,

the 77-year-old civil engineer and

businessman Rodolfo Hernández

whose social media presence has

earned him the nickname “the

old guy on TikTok.”

If he manages to beat Gutiérr-

ez, the country could see a close

second-round race between two

populist, anti-establishment can-

didates.

In the meantime, Petro faces

more immediate risks — ones to

his life. He’s campaigning in a

country where criminal groups

have alliances in powerful places,

where killings of social leaders

are soaring, and where four presi-

dential candidates, three of them

on the left, have been assassinat-

ed in the past 35 years. One of

them, Carlos Pizarro, was much

like Petro: a former member of

the guerrilla group called the

19th of April Movement, an or-

ganization that emerged to decry

what it saw as fraudulent presi-

dential elections in 1970.

In cities like Cali, Petro’s cam-

paign is turning to extraordinary

measures to help keep the candi-

date safe. More than 1,000 police

officers, in addition to Petro’s

government-funded bodyguards,

were deployed to help secure the

area. And about three days before

the rally in Cali, front-line mem-

bers said, campaign leaders

reached out to them for help.

The protesters faced off

against police one year ago in

historic nationwide protests ini-

tially in response to a controver-

sial tax overhaul. Police respond-

ed with brutal force, killing at

least 25 people, according to Hu-

man Rights Watch.

The hundreds of front-line

demonstrators in Cali were a

particularly polarizing group. To

some, they were fearless commu-

nity leaders who were gassed,

beaten and shot at by police. To

others, they were violent instiga-

tors who blocked roads, de-

stroyed buildings and looted

businesses.

Juan Carlos Ruíz Vásquez, a

professor at the Universidad del

Rosario and former adviser to

Colombia’s defense ministry, said

their participation in Petro’s se-

curity “seems extremely serious.”

Petro’s critics already question

his relationship with them.

National police Lt. Col. Carlos

Alberto Feria Buitrago, head of

security for Petro, said volunteers

such as the front line are simply

providing logistical support to

help manage the crowd. The can-

didate’s official security team co-

ordinates only with government

authorities, he said.

But some front-line members

standing near the stage wore

black shirts with the word “secu-

rity.” They coordinated with po-

lice officers and helped set up

barricades. Talking through radi-

os, they watched the crowds for

unusual behavior, at one point

flagging suspicious movement on

a rooftop, using skills they gained

through months of navigating

violent protests. They laid out

exit strategies, discussing the op-

tion of rushing Petro into the

church behind the stage in the

event of a threat. Some carried

the same painted metal shields

they used during last year’s pro-

tests.

One near the stage was Heidel

Arboleda, 35, a member of the

front line at Puerto Resistencia,

one of the most important points

of protest in the city.

“The right doesn’t want to let

go of power, and that worries us,”

Arboleda said. “They want to

scare us.”

But another front-line mem-

ber, Hernando Muñoz, said

they’re no longer afraid.

“We lost that fear in the

streets,” Muñoz said. “We have

nothing left to lose.”

Diana Durán contributed to this

report.

Behind shields, Colombian candidates press on

A l eftist pair is steady in their campaign to lead the country even amid fear and p rofound threats to their lives

PHOTOS BY CAROLINA NAVAS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Gustavo Petro, s tanding with running mate Francia Márquez and flanked by two guards with bulletproof shields, addresses supporters at a campaign event in Cali on May 19.

People from the Organización Indígena Regional del Valle l isten to
the speech of presidential candidate Gustavo Petro on May 19.

Supporters of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez leave at the end of May 19 rally. The front-runners

are on the cusp of swinging the country’s politics further left than ever before.