46 Saturday May 28 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
Survivors of abuse
criticise church move
Italy The Catholic Church is to
analyse 20 years of records on
child sex abuse by clerics. The
Bishops’ Conference said the
study, in collaboration with
unnamed independent research
institutions, would look at alleged
or confirmed crimes by clerics in
Italy from 2000 to 2021. The aim
would be to establish a “deeper
and more objective knowledge of
the phenomenon”. Clerical abuse
survivor groups, however,
demanded that Italy allow a full
and independent inquiry.
Francesco Zanardi, who was
abused by a priest, said it was
discriminatory to study cases
from 2000 onwards, with “many
cases, like mine, excluded”. (AFP)Dossier on killing of
reporter sent to ICC
Israel Al Jazeera is preparing to
submit a dossier to the
International Criminal Court on
the killing of its reporter Shireen
Abu Akleh in the occupied West
Bank. The news channel has
accused Israeli soldiers of
deliberately killing her. Israel says
she was shot in a battle between
soldiers and militants. The court
started an inquiry into alleged
Israeli war crimes last year. (AP)Killer whale trapped in
river at risk of dying
France A killer whale that has
swum up the River Seine from Le
Havre to Rouen is at risk of dying,
it is claimed. The 13ft-male orca
was seen at the mouth of the river
on May 16 but has been unable to
find enough food and fresh water
is damaging its health. Gérard
Mauger, an animal welfare
expert, said it was hard “to find
solutions to try to make it go back
to the salt water”. (Reuters)Ethiopia urged to
release journalists
Ethiopia At least a dozen
journalists were among more
than 4,000 people arrested in the
Amhara region in an anti-crime
operation, a human rights group
said. The US expressed alarm
about “the narrowing space for
freedom of expression and
independent media”. The
Committee to Protect Journalists
urged Ethiopia to free them and
stop harassing the press. (AFP)Two climbers die and
nine hurt in Alps ice fall
Switzerland A French woman
aged 40 and a Spanish man aged
65 were killed by falling blocks of
ice that injured nine other
climbers in the Grand Combin
massif in the Alps. The ice broke
off at 11,150ft, police in Valais
canton said. Seven helicopters
took the nine casualties, two of
whom were seriously injured, to
hospital and carried others
off the mountain. (AP)Bollywood star’s son in
clear after drug arrest
India The son of the Bollywood
star Shah Rukh Khan, 56, will not
be prosecuted after his arrest on
drug charges on a cruise ship off
Mumbai in October. Aryan Khan,
24, an aspiring actor and director,
was held for three weeks then
released on bail. Police said that
the evidence gathered since then
did not implicate him but 14
others arrested in the same
operation would be charged. (AP)When Colombia goes to the polls
tomorrow, one candidate can make
good on his promise to change the
country’s history, simply by winning.
The former left-wing guerrilla
Gustavo Petro, 62, is polling far ahead
of his rivals. He hopes to wrest control
from the political and economic elite,
who traditionally hold power. If he
wins, he will be the country’s first left-
wing president.
Colombia bears the scars of nearly six
decades of conflict with left-wing rebels
led by the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (Farc) guerrillas, which
ended with a peace deal in 2016.
Violence is on the rise again, how-
ever, as areas abandoned by Farc be-
come battlegrounds for the rival guer-
rilla group National Liberation Army
Belgium to return
trophy taken from
dead Congo leader
“We will have some part of Lumumba
to bring home to the land of his ances-
tors. But this is not the end. However
long it takes, we will be searching for the
answers. It was not just the assassina-
tion of a man, but of our democracy in
Congo.”
Juliana was just five when he was
killed, but still has strong and affection-
ate memories of her father, a charis-
matic and popular leader who symbol-
ised the early democratic ideals of Afri-
can national liberation. “I was very
spoiled, a typical daddy’s girl and was
always in his arms. When he became
prime minister in 1960 I used to go to
the office with him. I was just happy to
go wherever he went. He was a wonder-
ful father,” she said.
The personal handover of the tooth
to the Lumumba children by Alexander
De Croo, the Belgian prime minister, on
June 20 is regarded by the government
as having “emblematic significance” for
both nations.
It will come just ten days before the
62nd anniversary of Congolese inde-
pendence and a week after a visit by
Belgium’s King Philippe, who is expect-
ed to repeat and expand on a 2020
apology for his country’s colonial role.
A burial will take place on June 29 at
the Patrice Émery Lumumba memorial
in Kinshasa, the capital.
Lumumba’s disappearance was part
of a descent into chaos for the Congo
that would lead in 1965 to the installa-
tion of Joseph Mobutu — later known
as Mobutu Sese Seko — as military dic-
tator for 32 years. He changed the
country’s name to Zaire under a regime
condoned and supported by Belgium,
America and other western powers.
Lumumba was arrested in December
1960 and tortured by being forced to eat
some of his own goatee beard and flesh.
One of the soldiers was physically sick
at the sight of the cruelty.
He was executed by firing squad on
January 17, 1961.
Belgium was confronted with its role
in the assassination in 1999 after
research and a bestselling book by Ludo
De Witte, a sociologist, who wrote that
the torture and killing “was managed,
organised and controlled, from A to Z,
by Belgian secret service and police”.Democratic Republic of Congo
Jane Flanagan Cape Town
Bruno Waterfield Brussels
Belgium will try to close one of the
darkest chapters in its history with a
ceremony next month to return the
remains of Patrice Lumumba, the mur-
dered Congolese independence leader,
to his family and country.
Lumumba, 35, was kidnapped,
tortured and assassinated in 1961 after a
military coup backed by western pow-
ers, with Belgium, Congo’s former colo-
nial master, taking the leading role.
All that remains of him is a gold tooth
torn from his mouth as a trophy by Ger-
ard Soete, a former Belgian police com-
missioner in colonial Congo.
Lumumba’s daughter, Juliana, 66,
will attend the handover of his remains
at the lavish colonial-era Egmont Pal-
ace in Brussels, now the Belgian foreign
ministry.
There are still many unanswered
questions for her, including rumours of
other remains taken after her father
was buried, disinterred, cut up and dis-
solved in acid to cover the traces of his
murder.
Soete, who died in Bruges in 2000,
boasted that he had taken two of
Lumumba’s teeth and fingers “as a kind
of hunting trophy”, with one gold molar
often shown on “display” to his cronies.
The tooth was seized by police in
2016 after Soete’s daughter showed it to
a Belgian magazine along with some of
the bullets used to kill Lumumba. In
2020, a Brussels court ruled that it must
be handed back to the Lumumba
family, leading to two years of fraught
negotiations between Belgium and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“Is there anything else left of him?
What happened to the other body
parts? These are questions we need
answered,” Juliana told The Times.
Patrice Lumumba
was tortured and
assassinatedEats roots and flosses A young brown bear appears to have realised the value of
dental hygiene and uses a stick as a toothpick in Katmai national park, AlaskaCHASE DEKKER/MINDEN PICTURES/SOLENT NEWSEx-guerrilla poised to be first
left-wing leader of Colombia
(ELN), drug cartels and Farc dissidents
who rejected the peace pact.
Born into a family of modest means
on the Caribbean coast, Petro’s first
foray into the world of national politics
came as a member of the nationalist
M-19 guerrillas in the 1980s, which he
joined at the age of 17. He led a settler
invasion of the land of a religious com-
munity in the central city of Zipaquirá.
He was tracked down by the army and
spent two years behind bars where he
claimed to have been tortured.
Petro spent two terms in congress as
and one in the senate, and served as the
mayor of Bogota from 2012 to 2015. This
is his third attempt at the presidency.
Petro, who has six children, entered
the race as a self-styled warrior for the
marginalised, promising to address
hunger and inequality. Critics portray
him as a radical who will bring about
Venezuela-style economic collapse.Colombia
Iñigo Alexander, Lianne Kolirin
Motorbike street race movie
gives French police road rage
The director of a French film about ille-
gal motorbike street racing has enraged
police officers by blaming them for
riders’ deaths.
Lola Quivoron, 33, made the claim
after Rodeo, her debut, was praised by
critics at the Cannes film festival.
Quivoron said that accidents during
the increasingly popular races were
“often caused by cops who give chase...
and who push the riders towards death”.
The Alliance police union described
street races, known as rodéos sauvages
(wild rodeos), as a “plague” for residents
of the mostly impoverished neighbour-
hoods that have to put up with them.
“Rodeos are a good, entertaining sub-
ject for a film but for victims and resi-
dents, the reality is very different,” the
union said. Valérie Boyer, a centre-rightsenator, agreed: “I hope that Lola Quiv-
oron will never be confronted by wild
rodeos in front of her house. [If she is],
she could make a film about desperate
French people and local councillors all
too often at their wits’ end.”
A total of 1,383 people were convicted
of participating in the illegal races in
France last year, compared with 991 in- Quivoron’s remarks were partic-
ularly inflammatory since Gérald Dar-
manin, 39, President Macron’s interior
minister, has told police to avoid giving
chase to reduce the risk of accidents. He
ordered officers to identify participants
and to seize their motorcycles instead.
In the Paris region, a five-year-old
boy was taken to hospital last week after
he and his mother were struck by teen-
agers racing by the side of a canal. Last
autumn, an 81-year-old woman was hit
and killed by a motorcycle during a race
in the central Auvergne region.
France
Adam Sage Paris