Trump’s Rushmore trip draws real and figurative fireworks



FILE - This March 22, 2019, file photo shows Mount Rushmore in Keystone, S.D. President Donald Trump will begin his Independence Day weekend on Friday with a patriotic display of fireworks at Mount Rushmore National Memorial before a crowd of thousands. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — President Donald Trump will begin his Independence Day weekend on Friday with a patriotic display of fireworks at Mount Rushmore before a crowd of thousands, but even in a part of the country where many remain supportive of the president, the event has drawn controversy and protests.

Trump is expected to speak at the event, which has issued 7,500 tickets to watch fireworks that he previewed on Thursday as a “display like few people have seen.” The president will likely enjoy a show of support, with the state Republican Party selling T-shirts that feature Trump on the memorial alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. But concern about coronavirus risk and wildfire danger from the fireworks, along with protests from Native American groups, will also greet the president.

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, a Trump ally, has said social distancing won’t be required during the event and masks will be optional. Event organizers will provide masks to anyone who wants them and plan to screen attendees for symptoms of COVID-19.

The Republican mayor of the largest city near the monument, Rapid City, said he is watching for a spike in cases after the event, the Rapid City Journal reported.

“We’re going to have thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder at these events — someone in line to see a president and being able to see fireworks at Mount Rushmore — they are probably not likely to disqualify themself because they developed a cough the day of or the day before,” Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender said.

Leaders of several Native American tribes in the region also raised concerns that the event could lead to coronavirus outbreaks among their members, who they say are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 because of an underfunded health care system and chronic health conditions.

“The president is putting our tribal members at risk to stage a photo op at one of our most sacred sites,” said Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.

Some Native American groups are using Trump’s visit to protest the Mount Rushmore memorial itself, pointing out that the Black Hills were taken from the Lakota people against treaty agreements.

Protests are expected in Keystone, the small town near the monument. Chase Iron Eyes, a spokesman for the Oglala Sioux president, said protesters would like to make their voice heard at the memorial itself, but it’s not clear they’ll be able to get close.

Security is expected to be tight, with the road leading up to Mount Rushmore shut down. The governor’s spokesperson, Maggie Seidel, would not say whether the South Dakota National Guard was being deployed, but said organizers are making sure it is a safe event.

But several people who once oversaw fire danger at the national memorial have said setting off fireworks over the forest is a bad idea that could lead to a large wildfire. Fireworks were called off after 2009 because a mountain pine beetle infestation increased the fire risks.

Noem pushed to get the fireworks resumed soon after she was elected, and enlisted Trump’s help. The president brushed aside fire concerns earlier this year, saying, “What can burn? It’s stone.”

The National Park Service studied the potential effect of the fireworks for this year and found they would be safe, though it noted that in a dry year, a large fire was a risk. Organizers are monitoring the fire conditions and were to decide Friday if the fireworks are safe.

Trump made no mention of the fire danger in fresh comments Thursday.

“They used to do it many years ago, and for some reason they were unable or unallowed to do it,” he said. “They just weren’t allowed to do it, and I opened it up and we’re going to have a tremendous July 3 and then we’re coming back here, celebrating the Fourth of July in Washington, D.C.”

“The Squad” Is Raising Money To Fight For Progressive Candidates

The Squad Victory Fund will allow Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib to help raise money for their campaigns and other progressives.

Kadia Goba BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC Posted on July 1, 2020

Alex Wroblewski / Getty Images
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.

WASHINGTON — Members of the Squad are launching a fundraising committee to raise money for their reelections and progressive campaigns all over the country.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib are combining their star power as outspoken first-term members of Congress to support other progressive hopefuls. The group will announce Wednesday accompanied by a short video.

As a joint fundraising committee, the Squad Victory Fund can only donate to political action committees already associated with each member’s individual campaign. Those PACs can then donate to other progressives.

At least half of the money will go to the congress members' individual campaigns to fend off opponents backed by high-spending.supporters. The Washington Post reported a slew of fundraising from the financial industry poured into Michelle Caruso-Cabrera's campaign who ran an unsuccessful primary against Ocasio-Cortez earlier this year.

The Squad has also received ire from President Donald Trump during campaign rallies and on Twitter.

Ocasio-Cortez and Omar are among the 30 strongest fundraisers in Congress; Ocasio-Cortez is the fifth-highest and has raised $2 million more this cycle than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another prolific fundraiser. In line with their grassroots approach to fundraising, they’ll reject money from lobbyists, corporate PACs, fossil fuel companies, and — a decision arrived on the heels of George Floyd’s killing — police organizations. (Not that much would likely be coming their way from such interests, as the four Democrats push to defund the police.)


“The progressive policies that my sisters and I are fighting for — Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, racial justice, an end to mass incarceration — have never been more important,” Ocasio-Cortez told BuzzFeed News.

Omar noted the “unprecedented historical moment” facing the nation. “People in our districts and across the country are demanding solutions to crises of public health, economic, and racial justice,” she said.

The Squad’s fundraising effort comes after several long-standing congressional members have already faced tough progressive challengers during 2020 primaries and lost. Jamaal Bowman who has likely unseated House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel. (An overwhelming number of mail-in votes due to the coronavirus will significantly delay a final tally, but Bowman leads significantly with more than 50,000 votes counted.)

“Last week’s elections showed the strength of progressive candidates of color who can speak to their communities,” Omar told BuzzFeed News, referencing Bowman’s likely win. “But they also showed the length the establishment is willing to go to cling to power.”

All four members backed progressives in the presidential primaries; all but Pressley — who backed Sen. Elizabeth Warren — endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But the fervor to oust moderate Democrats in Congress — and moderate Democrats’ continued worries about being primaried — began this cycle in September 2019 when Ocasio-Cortez backed Marie Newman, a progressive, who ultimately ran a successful campaign against Illinois Rep. Dan Lipinski, one of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress.

The Squad’s progressive movement is rooted in Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 unexpected win against Rep. Joe Crowley, a longtime incumbent and favorite to succeed Speaker Nancy Pelosi in leadership. Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib were elected at the same time and quickly became a noticeable force within the House Democratic caucus.

But even with the backing of progressive political PACs, the progressive wing of the Democratic caucus has struggled with gaining support for policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. The lawmakers are helping to level the playing field.

“Wall Street and Trump donors poured over $3 million into an attempt to defeat me and now they’re preparing to do even more to stop this progressive momentum in its tracks,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The Squad Victory Fund will help us fight back.”

UPDATE
July 1, 2020, at 8:23 a.m.


This story was updated to include more information about the Squad Victory Fund.
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Kadia Goba is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

NOT REALLY PRO LIFEThe Trump Administration Is Set To Resume Executions In Two Weeks. There’s A Last-Ditch Effort To Stop It.

Federal death row inmates are asking a judge to intervene on new legal grounds after the US Supreme Court refused to get involved. The ACLU is also suing.

Zoe Tillman BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, DC July 2, 2020

Handout / Getty Images
San Quentin State Prison's lethal injection facility, which was dismantled on March 13, 2019.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is set to execute Daniel Lewis Lee on July 13 by lethal injection. If it happens, it’ll be the first time in nearly two decades that the federal government has carried out an execution.

Death row inmates and death penalty opponents have less than two weeks to convince a judge to intervene before Lee’s execution, the first of four that the Trump administration has scheduled for men convicted of murdering children. On Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a new lawsuit raising a novel argument — that at least one of the executions should be delayed because the coronavirus pandemic puts everyone involved in the lethal injection process at risk of exposure.


Rev. Seigen Hartkemeyer, a Zen Buddhist priest who has served as a spiritual adviser to Wesley Purkey, a death row inmate scheduled for execution on July 15, wrote in a blog post published by the ACLU on Thursday that he has a religious duty to be with Purkey. But Hartkemeyer said that because he has a history of lung illness and is 68 years old, he was being “asked to make an impossible decision.”

“The federal government’s decision to proceed with Wes’s execution burdens my religious freedom by forcing me to choose between performing my religious duties as a priest, and protecting my own life,” Hartkemeyer wrote. “Although Trump officials have repeatedly claimed the mantle of guardians of religious liberty, too often their commitment wavers when it is inconvenient for their political agenda. This appears to be one of those times.”

Late Thursday, a federal appeals court stepped in to pause Purkey's execution, issuing a decision in a separate challenge that Purkey raised about his criminal conviction. The US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled against Purkey, finding that he wasn't entitled to raise issues now related to whether his trial counsel was ineffective. But the court agreed to stay Purkey's execution until he'd had a chance to exhaust all of his legal options — he could petition the full 7th Circuit to rehear the case for instance, or ask the US Supreme Court to take the case. If Purkey does end up losing, however, the new ACLU case would come back into play.

The ACLU lawsuit isn’t the only pending legal action challenging the Trump administration’s plan. Purkey and other death row inmates have been fighting in court since the Justice Department announced last July that Attorney General Bill Barr had ordered the Bureau of Prisons to resume lethal injections for the first time since 2003. The inmates are still waiting to see if a judge will step in before Lee’s scheduled execution on July 13.


Purkey, Lee, and the other two inmates whose executions are scheduled for July and August were all convicted of murder, among other serious crimes. The Justice Department has made clear that it chose these first four inmates to execute based on the fact that their cases involved the murder of children.


“The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Barr said in a statement released by DOJ last month. “The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

Lee was found guilty in the murder of a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl. His legal team released a video of the girl’s grandmother, Earlene Peterson, explaining that she was opposed to Lee being executed instead of serving a life sentence, which is what Lee’s codefendant received after he was found guilty.

“Yes, I believe you have to pay for what you do, but that don’t mean death,” Peterson says in the video.

Lee and the other death row inmates who went to court won an injunction in the fall from a federal judge in Washington, DC, putting a pause on their executions. But the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit reversed that decision in April, giving the Trump administration the green light to set a new schedule.


The inmates asked the US Supreme Court to order a delay and review the DC Circuit’s decision, but on June 29 a majority of the justices rejected that request; Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have delayed the executions and taken up the case, according to the order released by the court.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to get involved didn’t end the inmates’ legal fight, however. In mid-June, the inmates filed a new motion for a preliminary injunction, this time pressing different legal arguments than they did the first round. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan set a fast briefing schedule, ordering the government to respond within a week. She has yet to rule.

The first injunction was about whether the single-drug injection protocol adopted by the Trump administration violated the Federal Death Penalty Act because it didn’t match execution protocols adopted by states where the federal death row inmates were set to be executed. Chutkan ruled that the inmates were likely to win on this argument. The DC Circuit disagreed in a 2–1 decision in April.

Trump’s two appointees to the DC Circuit, judges Greg Katsas and Neomi Rao, sided with the administration in that decision. The Trump administration has made clear that it views the confirmation of conservative federal judges, especially in the appeals courts, as a central part of its policy strategy, politicizing these nominations despite protests from judges, and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., that they are nonpolitical actors.

The DC Circuit ruling noted that the inmates still had other unresolved legal claims, however, and that’s what the inmates are pressing now before Chutkan. They’re arguing that the administration’s lethal injection plan violates other federal laws, such as the Administrative Procedure Act; the inmates contend the administration failed to consider various risks associated with its lethal injection drug of choice, sodium pentobarbital, and that it represents the type of “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.


Purkey, who was convicted in 2003 of raping and killing a 16-year-old girl, has a separate lawsuit pending seeking to block his July 15 execution. His lawyers filed a request for an injunction in late June arguing that he has schizophrenia, dementia, and other mental illnesses that make him incompetent to be executed under the Eighth Amendment. That case is also assigned to Chutkan, and she set a similarly fast schedule for briefing.

“Wes Purkey is a severely brain-damaged and mentally ill man who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease,” Rebecca Woodman, one of Purkey’s attorneys, said in a statement. “He has long accepted responsibility for the crime that put him on death row, but as his dementia has progressed, he no longer has a rational understanding of why the government plans to execute him. He believes his execution is part of a large-scale conspiracy against him by the federal government in retaliation for his frequent challenges to prison conditions, and he believes his own lawyers are working against him within this conspiracy."

Purkey, Lee, and the two other inmates set for execution — Keith Nelson and Dustin Lee Honken — are held at the Terre Haute high-security federal prison facility in Indiana. In the lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Indiana by Hartkemeyer, the Buddhist priest, the ACLU lawyers noted that the Terre Haute facility had documented cases of COVID-19; state and federal jails and prisons across the US have been hot spots for coronavirus cases.

“The Federal Government’s extensive and large-scale plans for the executions amplify the risk posed by the executions. Each execution will require the travel, movement, and congregation of hundreds of individuals, including the families of the victims and the death row prisoners, scores of correctional officers, members of local and national media, as well as large numbers of witnesses and legal counsel from around the country,” the complaint states.


According to the lawsuit, there has been only one execution nationwide since March, carried out by state officials in Missouri.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 25 states still permit the death penalty. Among those states, nine haven’t carried out an execution in the past decade, and another five haven’t executed someone in the past five years, per the center’s data.


Federal executions have been even rarer. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, three federal executions took place in the early 2000s, with the last one taking place in 2003. There were a total of 37 federal executions between 1927 and 2003, with none occurring in the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s.

Since 2003, the federal government’s authority to execute inmates has been tied up in court. Federal death row inmates who had execution dates on the calendar filed a lawsuit to stop any future lethal injections in 2005, and a judge delayed those executions while the case was being litigated. As the George W. Bush administration and, later, the Obama administration set additional execution dates, those inmates joined the case and their executions were also put on hold.

The litigation had been inactive since 2011, when the Obama administration began exploring changes to the lethal injection protocol, which in practice put the entire system on hold. It picked back up when the Justice Department announced last summer that it had adopted the new protocol and initially set five execution dates.


The fifth inmate who originally had an execution date, Lezmond Mitchell, is involved in the lethal injection protocol case, but he also has a separate legal challenge to his conviction pending before the 9th Circuit. A three-judge panel in April rejected Mitchell’s argument that he should be allowed to interview jurors to probe whether there was racial bias; Mitchell is Native American. He filed a request for the full court to reconsider the case on June 15.

In ruling against Mitchell, two of the judges wrote separately to express concerns they had that the Justice Department chose to pursue the death penalty against Mitchell when the Navajo Nation, as well as the victims’ family, opposed capital punishment. Mitchell was found guilty in the murder of a 63-year-old woman and her 9-year-old granddaughter; the crime took place on a Navajo reservation.

“The imposition of the death penalty in this case is a betrayal of a promise made to the Navajo Nation, and it demonstrates a deep disrespect for tribal sovereignty,” Judge Morgan Christen wrote. “People can disagree about whether the death penalty should ever be imposed, but our history shows that the United States gave tribes the option to decide for themselves.”

UPDATE
July 2, 2020, at 6:49 p.m.


Updated with information about a new 7th Circuit ruling in Wesley Purkey's case.


MORE ON THIS
The Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Federal Executions. It Will Immediately End Up In Court.Zoe Tillman · July 25, 2019
Inmates Said The Drug Burned As They Died. This Is How Texas Gets Its Execution Drugs.Chris McDaniel · Nov. 28, 2018TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
Justice Department



Zoe Tillman is a senior legal reporter with BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.

Contact Zoe Tillman at zoe.tillman@buzzfeed.com.

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Jimi Hendrix - Red House (Live) very rare 
1968 FILLMORE EAST

Military chief: Troops were issued bayonets in DC unrest

 ANOTHER NIXON FLASH BACK, KENT STATE



CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has confirmed a report by The Associated Press that some of the service members who were mobilized to Washington, D.C., last month in response to civil unrest over the killing of George Floyd were issued bayonets. Defense documents obtained by the AP show some were not trained in riot response.

Members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, which is based in D.C. and typically guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, were mobilized last month to respond to massive protests over the treatment of Black Americans and systemic issues of police brutality. But the troops were never actually sent to the protests after they arrived.

The soldiers were issued bayonets for their June 2 deployment — but told they were to remain in their scabbards and not attached to their service rifles, Joint Chiefs Chairman Army Gen. Mark A. Milley wrote to two U.S. representatives in a letter that was obtained by the AP. The soldiers were also told no weapons were to enter the capital without clear orders and only after nonlethal options were first reviewed, he said.

Milley said the order to mobilize the troops came from Army Maj. Gen. Omar Jones, who serves as commander of the military district of Washington. Milley’s letter, dated June 26, was sent to Democratic Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois and Rep. Ted Lieu of California, who demanded an explanation after the AP first reported on the use of bayonets on June 2.

Roughly 700 members of the 82nd Airborne Division were sent on that day to two military bases near the District Capitol Area. The AP previously reported soldiers were armed with live rounds, bayonets, and riot gear. Bloomberg reported on June 11 that the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, nicknamed “The Old Guard,” was also issued bayonets.

Upon arrival, neither the 82nd nor The Old Guard were ever called off base and into the city to respond to protests. Division paratroopers were sent back to Fort Bragg on June 4.

But the reports led to sharp condemnation and outrage on social media platforms.

An unclassified military document obtained by the AP also shows that some of the soldiers were not prepared to deal with the protesters. Instead, commanders planned to give them the proper training within 96 hours of their arrival in Washington.


While some infantry soldiers are trained in crowd control, especially those preparing for overseas deployment, they don’t typically undergo training for riot control and domestic civil unrest.

In a letter to Milley on June 22, Krishnamoorthi and Lieu expressed concern that the use of bayonets could escalate any potential violence at protests. They drew parallels to the 1970 Kent State shootings in which four students were killed by National Guardsmen.

“The escalation and violence leading up to and following those killings included those same troops meeting peaceful demonstrators with bayonets,” the representatives wrote.

In his response, Milley stopped short of agreeing to bar service members from deploying to domestic protests with bayonets in the future. He said each situation would have to be dealt with individually.

In a joint statement to the AP on Thursday, the U.S. representatives wrote: “While we are grateful for General Milley’s responses to our questions concerning the arming of troops with bayonets for potential deployment against protesters, we were disappointed he was not willing to commit to banning the practice.”

They added: “We recognize the necessity of the Joint Force preserving flexibility to respond to varying circumstances, but it is difficult for us to imagine a circumstance which could necessitate or justify the deployment of bayonets against American civilians.”

TRUMP CALLS PROTESTERS ANARCHISTS 

NIXON CALLED THEM BUMS

The bayonet news broke at the same time the AP first reported that President Donald Trump ordered military aircraft to fly above demonstrators in a “show of force.” That information came from two Defense Department officials who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing operations publicly.

Show-of-force missions within the U.S. military are designed to intimidate an opposing force and to warn of potential military action if provoked further. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told reporters that the incident, involving an Army National Guard medical evacuation helicopter that hovered low over protesters in Washington, D.C., is under investigation.

Milley also found himself embroiled in controversy after he walked with President Donald Trump to a photo-op outside St. John’s Church after passing through Lafayette Park, which the military cleared of protesters beforehand.

He later apologized and said he “should not have been there.”

___

LaPorta reported from Delray Beach, Florida.

Undocumented workers in Ontario fear getting tested for COVID-19

•Jul 2, 2020

CBC News

The Ontario towns of Leamington and Kingsville have some of the highest rates of coronavirus infection in Canada, with large outbreaks on farms and at greenhouses. Santiago Escobar of the Agricultural Workers Alliance says undocumented workers are wary of being tested, fearing they could be deported.

JIMI HENDRIX PURPLE HAZE LIVE ISLE OF WIGHT 1970

Black worker files discrimination complaint against Facebook

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A Black Facebook employee, joined by two others who were denied jobs at the social network, has filed a complaint against the company, saying it discriminates against Black workers and applicants in hiring, evaluations, promotions and pay.

The charge was filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by Oscar Veneszee, Jr., who has worked as an operations program manager at Facebook since 2017 and claims he has not been fairly evaluated or promoted despite his “excellent performance” at the company. Two others joined Veneszee’s complaint, saying they were unlawfully denied jobs at the company despite being qualified


Facebook said in a statement it takes discrimination allegations seriously and investigates every case.

“We believe it is essential to provide all employees with a respectful and safe working environment,” said spokeswoman Pamela Austin.

Black workers account for 3.8% of all U.S. Facebook employees and 1.5% of all U.S. technical workers at the company. Those numbers have barely budged over the past several years, a common pattern across large Silicon Valley firms.

This isn’t the first criticism a Black employee has leveled at Facebook. Mark Luckie, who left the company in 2018, sent a memo to his coworkers on his last day — also posted on Facebook — that chronicled what he called Facebook’s “black people problem.”

“Facebook’s disenfranchisement of black people on the platform mirrors the marginalization of its black employees,” Luckie wrote. “In my time at the company, I’ve heard far too many stories from black employees of a colleague or manager calling them ‘hostile’ or ‘aggressive’ for simply sharing their thoughts in a manner not dissimilar from their non-Black team members.”

According to Veneszee’s complaint, filed on Thursday, “people of color and Black workers in particular remain underrepresented at all levels of Facebook and especially at the management and leadership levels. They do not feel respected or heard. And they do not believe that Black workers have an equal opportunity to advance their careers at Facebook.”

While there may be Black Lives Matter posters on Facebook’s walls, the complaint says, “Black workers don’t see that phrase reflecting how they are treated in Facebook’s own workplace.”

AP Source: NFL to play Black anthem before national anthem

“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” will be performed live or played before “The Star-Spangled Banner” prior to each NFL game during Week 1 and the league is considering putting names of victims of police brutality on helmet decals or jersey patches, a person familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press.

The person said the league is working collaboratively with players to recognize victims of systemic racism throughout the season in a variety of ways. The person spoke to the AP on Thursday on condition of anonymity because discussions between the league and the NFL Players Association are ongoing.

Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” is traditionally known as the Black anthem. It’ll be played first when the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs host the Houston Texans to kick off the NFL regular season on Sept. 10.

REALLY I THOUGHT THIS WAS THE BLACK AMERICAN ANTHEM 

AFTER WHICH THEY COULD PLAY HENDRIX VERSION OF STAR SPANGLED BANNER


JIMI'S BLACK LIFE MATTERED 
VERSION BY STEVIE RAY VAUGHN

Belgium takes down statue, king regrets colonial violence

THE ACT OF CUTTING OFF THE HAND, USED IN RWANDA WAS INTRODUCED BY THE KING OF BELGIUM AS A SOLUTION TO SLAVE REVOLTS IN 19TH CENTURY CONGO

1 of 17 https://apnews.com/f55831878a4f94691f1b3451a818fddf

A bust of Belgium's King Leopold II, is hoisted off of its plinth by a crane as it's removed from a park in Ghent, Belgium on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Protests sweeping the world after George Floyd's death in the U.S. have added fuel to a movement to confront Europe's role in the slave trade and its colonial past. Leopold II is increasingly seen as a stain on the nation where he reigned from 1865 to 1909 with some demonstrators calling for his removal from public view. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

BRUSSELS (AP) — Belgium confronted its colonial past and looked toward reconciliation Tuesday, with the king expressing regret for the violence carried out by the country when it ruled over what is now Congo. Later in the day, the bust of a former monarch held responsible for the death of millions of Africans was taken off public display.

As Belgium marked the 60th anniversary of the end of its colonial rule in Congo, King Philippe’s words had resounding significance since none of his predecessors went so far as to convey remorse.

In a letter to the Congolese president, Felix Tshisekedi, Philippe stopped short of issuing a formal apology, but proclaimed his “deepest regrets” for the “acts of violence and cruelty” and the “suffering and humiliation” inflicted on Belgian Congo.

The removal of King Leopold II’s statue took place only hours after Philippe’s letter was published. The monarch, who ruled Belgium from 1865-1909, plundered Congo as if it were his personal fiefdom, forcing many of its people into slavery to extract resources for his own profit.

The early years after he laid claim to the African country are especially infamous for killings, forced labor and other forms of brutality that some experts estimate left as many as 10 million Congolese dead.

Following a short ceremony punctuated by readings, Leopold’s bust in Ghent was attached to a crane with a strap and taken away from the small park where it stood amid applause. It will be transferred to a warehouse of a Ghent city museum pending further decision from a city’s commission in charge of decolonization projects.

“Removing statues does not erase history, it rectifies history and makes new history that rightly calls into question dominant narratives,” said Mathieu Charles, an activist from the Belgian Network for Black Lives.

Belgium has long struggled to come to terms with its colonial past, instead focusing on the so-called positive aspects of the colonization. But the international protests against racism that followed the May 25 death of George Floyd in the United States have given a new momentum to activists fighting to have monuments to Leopold removed.

Earlier this month, about 10,000 people gathered in Brussels despite the social distancing measures implemented to fight the spread of COVID-19, with many protesters chanting anti-colonialist slogans.

The Leopold statue in Ghent was vandalized several times in the past and again after Floyd, a handcuffed Black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. Several other monuments of the former king scattered across Belgium were defaced over the past few weeks and a statue of the monarch in the port of Antwerp was removed from a marketplace by local authorities.

Meanwhile, regional authorities also promised history course reforms to better explain the true character of colonialism while the federal Parliament decided that a commission would look into Belgium’s colonial past.

Belgium Prime minister Sophie Wilmes has called for “an in-depth” debate conducted “without taboo.”

“In 2020, we must be able to look at this shared past with lucidity and discernment,” she said Tuesday. “Any work of truth and memory begins with the recognition of suffering. Acknowledging the suffering of the other.”

After Leopold’s claimed ownership of Congo ended in 1908, he handed it over to the Belgian state, which continued to rule over the colony 75 times Belgium’s size until the African nation became independent in 1960.

In his letter Philippe stressed the “common achievements” reached by Belgium and its former colony, but also the painful episodes of their unequal relationship.

“At the time of the independent State of the Congo, acts of violence and cruelty were committed that still weigh on our collective memory,” Philippe wrote, referring to the period when the country was privately ruled by Leopold II from 1885 to 1908.

“The colonial period that followed also caused suffering and humiliation,” Philippe acknowledged. “I want to express my most deepest regrets for these wounds of the past, the pain of which is today revived by discrimination that is all too present in our societies,”

Philippe also congratulated Tshisekedi on the anniversary of Congo’s independence, ruing that he was not able to attend the celebrations to which he had been invited due to the coronavirus pandemic.

___

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